Email Marketing RulesHow to Trim Your Out-of-Control Martech Stack
Posted on April 25, 2022
I couldn’t agree more with Bonnie Crater’s first prediction in her recent MarketingProfs article on the Top 3 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2022, which is that “B2B marketers will trim their tech stacks.” In her article, she says, “B2B marketers will look for opportunities to consolidate and simplify their tech stacks, paring down the number of solutions they use to more manageable levels.”
This has been a recurring theme among our discussions with our clients, especially during the pandemic, which has not only pressured companies’ bottom lines but also their ability to react quickly and coherently to changing customer behaviors and needs. What we’ve heard repeatedly is client after client wondering aloud how their sprawling martech stack got to its current state, which can best be described as a Frankenstein’s monster.
In this article, I talk about how marketers got to this point, the mounting costs of a best-of-breed approach, and the merits of a best-of-suite approach.
Second Quarter 2022 Holiday Marketing Quarterly
Posted on April 8, 2022
The holiday season doesn’t have an off-season. Having a successful holiday season means executing a successful year-round strategy. Oracle’s Holiday Marketing Quarterly gives B2C brands a quarter-by-quarter plan for how to achieve more during the critical holiday season with their email marketing and other digital marketing channels.
Our second quarter checklist is focused on finishing your review of the 2021 holiday season and then making a range of improvements to everything from subscriber acquisition to performance reporting to campaign production. In this Holiday Marketing Quarterly, we’ll cover:
- Holiday Messaging Competitive Intelligence
- Subscriber Acquisition Source Optimization
- Unsubscribe Process Optimization
- Improving Analytics & Reporting
- Experimentation & Testing
- Accelerating Campaign Build Processes
For the full checklist…
The Last Word on March 2022
Posted on April 6, 2022
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Apple’s ‘Hide My Email’ Adoption Rates and What to Do About It (FreshAddress)
4 Qualities of an Intent-Driven Marketing Automation Email Program (MarTech)
When Content Impacts Deliverability (Kickbox)
E.U. Takes Aim at Big Tech’s Power With Landmark Digital Act (New York Times)
16 Trailblazing Female Email Marketers Speak Up for International Women’s Day 2022 (Pure360)
When email goes wrong with Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise (Mailgun)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
Hot take: the promo tab is the #KonMari method for email.
Do those emails spark joy, yes. Do they live in their own special, well-organized box? YES.
Let ’em be! Stop fighting to disorganize my life!#emailgeeks #emailtweets #YesIAmAHugeFanOfMarieKondo
— Skyler H (@Holobachgirl) March 15, 2022
I hate to turn down consulting opportunities, I really do. But I honestly just can’t fix it when the “it” is “cold lead emails.” Low volumes + low interest + no permission = quagmire.
— Al Iverson’s Spam Resource (@spamresource) March 27, 2022
Noteworthy subject lines
ANA Marketing 360 A.M., 3/7 – We’re Urging Members to Support Sanctions Imposed by U.S. Against Russia
Express, 3/8 – Happy International Women’s Day ❤️
Burlington, 3/8 – Let’s Celebrate #InternationalWomensDay
Saks Fifth Avenue, 3/8 – 3 game-changing women on what International Women’s Day means to them
Lane Bryant, 3/8 – For you, on International Women’s Day 💕
ModCloth, 3/8 – 🙌 Extra 50% off for International Women’s Day! 🙌
Lane Bryant, 3/27 – And the award for BEST DEAL ENDING TONIGHT is…
The Nuts.com Family, 3/11 – Seize The Snacks For Your Next At-Home Viewing 🎥
Verizon Fios, 3/25 – Press ▶️ | Spider-Man: No Way Home is here.
Express, 3/18 – Celebrate National Confidence Day with Tan France 🎉
Banana Republic, 3/22 – It’s World Water Day
Bed Bath & Beyond, 3/30 – FREE same day delivery: save gas, we’ll drop it off today!
Eddie Bauer, 3/8 – ☀️ Fun Styles For Spring Smiles
Airbnb, 3/26 – Start dreaming about summer ☀️
Quiksilver, 3/6 – Every session, all season. The wetsuit you can trust.
West Elm, 3/17 — *These* look especially great poolside 😎
Petco, 3/30 – Your pet’s coat in full bloom 🌸 with a free 8th groom.
ModCloth, 3/11 – How to time travel.
West Elm, 3/20 – The perfect sofa does not exi-
IKEA Family, 3/10 – Create a space that’s full of personality
Target, 3/17 – Is it time for a bathroom refresh? ⏰
MoMA Design Store, 3/5 –Your Laundry Day, Transformed
Gap Friends & Family – Code FRIEND for 40% off. Rewards Members save MORE –>
Williams Sonoma, 3/16 – Calphalon Elite is BACK IN STOCK + guide to non-stick cookware
West Elm, 3/25 – Big news: The West Elm Registry app is here!
Eddie Bauer, 3/8 – Introducing Eddie Bauer Stories
Express, 3/29 – TONIGHT: Find ‘fits for every RSVP on Express Live 🎥
Macy’s, 3/22 – Own Your Style: check out our new hub for brands, inspo, and all the spring trends ✨
Inspire by Namecheap, 3/27 – UX/UI trends you must follow in 2022
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Loyalty Program Liabilities: Definitions & Recommendations
5 Ways to Generate More Loyalty & Email Signups
Inboxing Podcast: Special Guest Chad White
How to Use Apple’s Auto Opens Safely
6 Ways to ‘Review and Improve’ Your Automated Emails
The Future of Email Podcast: A Conversation with Chad S. White of Oracle
The Biggest Shifts in Email Marketing Trends for 2022
How Mail Privacy Protection Is Changing How Email Marketing Performance Is Measured
Webbula: How Did the Email Industry Do During the Pandemic?
Posted on March 30, 2022
Email marketing was in heavy use during the early months of the pandemic. Webbula reached out to 9 email marketing experts, including me, to get our take on how the email industry did?
There were definitely a variety of opinions on just how we did as an industry. In my answer to the question, I focused on two things:
- The role that empathy played in brands’ email messaging, and
- How companies that were constrained in their messaging used brand building
To read my response, as well as the eight others…
Loyalty Program Liabilities: Definitions & Recommendations
Posted on March 28, 2022
When you launch a points-based loyalty program, you’re creating a micro-economy with its own currency, market dynamics, and—most importantly from a legal standpoint—liabilities. Because these points can have monetary value that’s realized at the time of redemption, companies must defer revenue to cover these costs.
In this post, Oracle CrowdTwist Senior Strategist Carly Mathews reviews key terms and definitions from the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s lengthy guidance on loyalty program accounting, including:
- Points issued
- Points burned
- Outstanding points
- Redemption rate
- Cost per point
With an understanding of all of those terms, you’re then able to calculate your loyalty program liability.
5 Ways to Generate More Loyalty & Email Signups
Posted on March 24, 2022
The sunsetting of third-party cookies is putting added pressure on marketers to grow their email subscriber and loyalty member audiences. In addition to needing to collect more email addresses as identifiers, they need the zero- and first-party data these programs generate to improve targeting and personalization across all their advertising and marketing efforts.
Here are five ways to boost your loyalty and email signups:
- Sell the benefits of signing up
- Make your signup forms simpler
- Make your signup forms more user-friendly
- Make your signup forms more prominent
- Use many subscriber acquisition sources
For more details on each of those…
Inboxing Podcast: Special Guest Chad White
Posted on March 21, 2022
I join host Hillel Berg for the second season of the Inboxing Podcast. During the hour-long conversation, we talk about:
- Mobile-friendliness
- Inclusive design and email accessibility
- Email marketing’s unique advantages
- The need to continue desiloing the email marketing channel
- List building
- Why I wrote “Email Marketing Rules”
- My top 5 email marketing tips for 2022
- And much more
6 Ways to ‘Review and Improve’ Your Automated Emails
Posted on March 10, 2022
As a slogan to promote automated emails, “set it and forget it” has been disastrously successful. That’s because, while it spurred marketers to create lots of triggered campaigns, it set horrible expectations for how to maximize their effectiveness.
The truth is that these are living, breathing campaigns that need ongoing care and nurturing for as long as you’re running them. That’s why I call these emails “review and improve” programs in my book, Email Marketing Rules. Here are 6 ways you can take care of your automated campaigns so they do the best job of taking care of your prospects and customers (and your bottom line):
- Automation Inventory
- Performance Reviews
- Quality Assurance Checks
- Design & Messaging Refreshes
- Testing & Optimization
- Seasonal Optimization
For a discussion of each of those…
The Future of Email Podcast: A Conversation with Chad S. White of Oracle
Posted on March 8, 2022
I join Matthew Dunn, the host of The Future of Email Podcast, to talk about major email marketing trends and where the industry is headed over the next 12-24 months. Recorded in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, our conversation is pretty heavy, getting into cyber- and geopolitics. We talk about:
- The need for a strategic roadmap, but also the disruptions that have led to email marketers throwing their roadmaps out repeatedly
- The many potential disruptions on the horizon this year
- How two years of upheaval have changed email marketers’ priorities
- How marketers handled the early months of the pandemic
- The mailbox provider landscape and its power dynamics
- How politics, power vacuums, and social value expression are changing marketing
- CAN-SPAM and the future of email legislation in America
- Mail Privacy Protection and Apple’s brand stance on privacy
- The historical importance of email opens in deliverability management
- Whether Google is likely to follow in Apple’s email privacy footsteps
- All the ways that Apple is flexing really hard right now
- Mega Tech monopoly risks
- The martech landscape and the best-of-suite proposition
- And much more…
The Biggest Shifts in Email Marketing Trends for 2022
Posted on March 4, 2022
The turbulence of the past two years has heavily influenced recent email marketing priorities and is shaping the trends that will dominate 2022. We can see those shifts in the results of our third-annual Email Marketing Trends Survey, where we surveyed Oracle Marketing Consulting’s more than 500 digital marketing experts about the adoption and impact of 26 email marketing tactics and technologies.
For a detailed look at all 26 trends and how they rated, check out our posts on:
- Unproven Opportunities, which are low-impact trends with low adoption
- Competitive Differentiators, which are high-impact trends with low adoption
- Proven Essentials, which are high-impact trends with high adoption
However, in this post, let’s go beyond the quadrant placements and look at the highest impact trends overall, the biggest increases and decreases in adoption and impact, the largest gap between the impact of a trend and its adoption, and much more.
Welcome! Email Marketing Rules is your guide to understanding the best practices of this complex, often misunderstood channel as you craft the best executions for your brand. Every week, we’ll explore strategies and tactics, discuss tips and inspiration, and dig into industry news and trends.
Chad S. White
Head of Research
Oracle Digital Experience Agency
Author of Email Marketing Rules and nearly 4,000 articles about digital and email marketing
