Email Marketing RulesWhen to Use Retina Images in Emails and When to Avoid Them
Posted on April 8, 2024
Because of the prevalence of full- and ultra-HD monitors and smartphone screens, marketers need to use retina images to ensure that their emails look crisp and professional. However, that doesn’t mean that every image in an email needs to be retina-quality.
Marketers should use retina images in their emails only when it creates a significantly better experience in terms of readability or impression. Otherwise, they should avoid them.
We’ll explain exactly why that is and exactly when to use retina images, but first let’s be clear about what we mean by a retina image.
How to Prioritize Email Personalization’s Perennially Moving Target
Posted on April 4, 2024
Email personalization has been a major priority for marketers for well over a decade. In Oracle Digital Experience Agency’s annual Email Marketing Survey, personalization has been among the top three trends in terms of both adoption and impact for all five years that we’ve done the survey. This finding is echoed by lots of other surveys, all of which indicate marketers putting significant effort into using their subscriber data to make their campaigns significantly more individually relevant.
You might react to this long-term trend by thinking one of two things:
- Wow, personalization is perennially a good investment that pays off.
- Yikes, personalization is clearly really difficult to execute on, otherwise we’d be moving on to other priorities as an industry.
When I recently spoke with Everyone Hates Your Brand podcast host Rob Voase, the latter was top of mind for him. He asked me:
What is it that is so hard to get right about personalization? Is it poor data? Is it legacy systems? Is it just too much hassle to do it? Why does personalization seem to be continually on the top of the list of things to do?
Those are all great questions, but let’s start with the last one, because that one gets at the core of the issue.
The Last Word on March 2024
Posted on April 2, 2024
A roundup of digital and email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Gmail: New Compliance Dashboard in GPT (SpamResource)
Analyzing the CEO–CMO Relationship and Its Effect on Growth (McKinsey & Co.)
Is Marketing Ready For RCS? (Only Influencers)
The AI Act Is Done. Here’s What Will (and Won’t) Change (MIT Technology Review)
Chatbot Letdown: Hype Hits Rocky Reality (Axios)
Using Generative AI for Data Analysis and Reporting (Only Influencers)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
There’re now multiple, very well resourced companies that “can’t afford to lose” spending billions to compete to build better LLMs. I expect this competition to go on for years. This is going to great for innovation, and also for everyone building applications on top of LLMs.
— Andrew Ng (@AndrewYNg) March 5, 2024
Noteworthy subject lines
The Home Depot, 3/19 – 🌼 Spring: Day 1 🌼
vineyard vines, 3/19 – New Styles For Every Spring Event 🎉
IKEA Family, 3/25 – Create a budget-friendly, backyard oasis.
Big Lots, 3/5 – New patio collections are here!
West Elm, 3/9 – Get growing 🌱 New planters
Crate & Barrel, 3/7 – Early spring produce…swoon. Get the recipes + tools you’ll need →
Clinique Online, 3/21 – The sunless way to bronzy brilliance.
vineyard vines, 3/12 – NEW: All The Best Shorts For Spring
Huckberry, 3/5 – Relwen Founder’s Top 4 Picks for Spring
Nintendo, 3/5 – Kick off MAR10 Day with classic Mario icon elements!
Scout from BARK, 3/10 – 🏆 And the award for best last-minute shopping goes to… 🫵
Uncommon Goods, 3/11 – Fill Your *Perfect* Easter Basket in 4 simple steps
Goldbelly, 3/11 – ☘️ A Box o’ FOOD At the End of The Rainbow! 🌈🎁
Scout from BARK, 3/17 – FREE first box! No, you’re not drunk. (But we are.)
Scout from BARK, 3/12 – This FREE TOY was a WOMAN’S idea 💡👏
Huckberry, 3/21 – Introducing: The 72-Hour Pant, Tested in Tasmania
Vuori, 3/21 – Water-Resistant. Packable. Ultra-Light.
kate spade, 3/12 – Clear the way for Clare!
The North Face, 3/21 – The North Face x UNDERCOVER collection drops soon
IKEA Family, 3/21 – 3 ways to conserve water and live more sustainably
Allrecipies, 3/26 – Barbra Streisand’s 5-Ingredient Meal Is So Relatable
Crate & Barrel, 3/24 – 4 secrets for the *perfect* outdoor space
Clinique Online, 3/24 – Inside! Your spring LIP-SPO 💋💋💋
Urban Outfitters, 3/11 – new graphics 🥵
Crate & Barrel, 3/11 – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | “This couch has become my favorite piece of furniture.”
MoMA Design Store, 3/11 – ”You can’t go wrong with this coffee maker!”
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Unlocking the Benefits of a Customer Data Platform [with on-demand webinar]
Mastering Retargeting: 5 Essential Strategies for Digital Marketers
Email Marketing Sustainability: Everyone Can Play a Part
A/B Testing vs. Multivariate Testing: Which Is Better for Your Website?
Inc.: Want Higher Open Rates? Send Good Emails Consistently
The Email Marketing Trends that Are Seeing Adoption & Success
The Biggest Shifts in Email Marketing Trends for 2024 [with on-demand webinar]
Unlocking the Benefits of a Customer Data Platform [with on-demand webinar]
Posted on March 29, 2024
Marketers know they need to better manage and mobilize their customer data if they’re going to be competitive in the future. They know this is becoming more critical as third-party cookies sunset, as consumer expectations for great omnichannel experiences rise, and as data-hungry AI becomes woven into operations. And they’re pretty sure that a customer data platform (CDP) is the foundational piece that they need.
However, many face a litany of challenges in getting one implemented. Those challenges include:
- Confusion around exactly what a CDP is and isn’t
- Understanding the most popular and powerful uses cases for a CDP
- Getting buy-in for a CDP
This post includes a 48-minute on-demand webinar that discusses all three of those challenges, but also discusses at length that last challenge around getting buy-in and working with various stakeholders to get a CDP implemented and running successfully.
Mastering Retargeting: 5 Essential Strategies for Digital Marketers
Posted on March 22, 2024
Retargeting via email, SMS, push, or social media advertising is no longer just a nice-to-have strategy. Today, it’s a necessity that enables you to reengage customers and drive marketing success.
For digital marketers, retargeting is a strategy used to reengage consumers who have previously interacted with content on their brand’s website or mobile app, but haven’t completed a desired action. For example, perhaps a customer added a product to their shopping cart, but didn’t purchase it.
Retargeting involves using a variety of channels to remind or incentivize them to return and convert, including potentially:
- Displaying targeted ads across various online platforms they visit
- Sending a personalized email (if they’ve opted in)
- Sending a personalized SMS message (if they’ve opted in)
- Sending a personalized mobile push notification (if they’ve opted in)
- Sending a personalized browser push notification (if they’ve opted in)
- Sending a personalized direct mail piece
By doing this, you increase brand recall, encourage conversions, and maximize the effectiveness of marketing efforts by focusing on consumers who are already familiar with your brand.
During her more than two decades working with clients, Oracle Digital Experience Agency’s Virginia Carcavallo has identified five indispensable practices that can help you elevate your retargeting game. Let’s discuss each of them.
Email Marketing Sustainability: Everyone Can Play a Part
Posted on March 20, 2024
Given that every email takes electricity to send and store, how can email marketers lower their carbon footprint? That was the central question behind “Green Your Emails,” the keynote presentation by Zillow’s Alice Li at Litmus Live last fall. Despite the increasing number of headlines about climate change and extreme weather, it’s a question I’d never seriously considered, outside of the issue of expiring emails. It’s a question that’s worthy of the email marketing industry’s time, especially when some of the solutions are already best practices and some others take relatively little effort.
While Alice’s wonderful presentation focused largely on how marketers can reduce the carbon footprint of the email programs and how their email service providers might support them, I’d like to expand the call-to-action by bringing in some other industry players. But let’s start with…
A/B Testing vs. Multivariate Testing: Which Is Better for Your Website?
Posted on March 15, 2024
You’ve decided to test the effectiveness of your website, but you’re not sure where to start. Perhaps you’ve heard about A/B and multivariate testing, but you’re not clear on the differences between the two, or which is the best approach for your brand.
When it comes to website optimization, A/B testing and multivariate testing each have distinct advantages and drawbacks. Let’s compare the two and determine which is the best option for your website.
Inc.: Want Higher Open Rates? Send Good Emails Consistently
Posted on March 14, 2024
ZeroBounce’s Email Statistics Report for 2024 is full of interesting insights about consumers’ inbox and email behaviors, but one of the more interesting ones is this:
47% of people stated that the primary reason they open all emails from a brand is that the brand always sends them relevant messages.
In reading that, I told Livui Tanase, founder and CEO of ZeroBounce, that their research confirmed once again that your sender name is more powerful than the oft-lauded subject line. That’s because your sender name brings to the surface all of your subscriber’s feelings about their recent interactions with your brand. So, for instance, if the last email interaction they had was good, then they’re much more likely to engage with your latest email. I call this the zero stage of an email interaction.
Livui shared this and much more in his latest column for Inc.
The Email Marketing Trends that Are Seeing Adoption & Success
Posted on March 7, 2024
Marketers constantly wrestle with which tactics and technologies they should invest their time and money in. For email marketers, the inaugural State of Email Trends report from Litmus and Oracle Digital Experience Agency provides valuable insights to help them make the best decisions for their brands this year.
The report is full of actionable findings, but here are the ones I find most interesting.
The Last Word on February 2024
Posted on March 6, 2024
A roundup of digital and email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
How to Manage Your CEO’s “Great Ideas” (Scaling CRM)
Google and Yahoo Are Cracking Down on Inbox Spam. Don’t Expect Less Email Marketing. (Wall Street Journal)
What AI Has Made Scarce (Christopher S. Penn)
The Way AI Will Be Sold to a Skeptical Public Is Starting to Become Clear (CNBC)
Into the Inbox: Email Statistics Report for 2024 (ZeroBounce)
Toward a Unified Taxonomy of Text-Based Social Media Use (The Verge)
X-tra, X-tra: Musk Announces A Rival Email Service To Gmail (MediaPost)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
You can’t AI personality.
— Guilda (@justguilda) February 15, 2024
Design is a language
— Matthew (@whale) February 29, 2024
Noteworthy subject lines
HP.com, 2/29 – Leap year savings! It only happens once every 4 years
Scout from BARK, 2/29 – Turn this extra day into a FREE extra month 👉
Urban Outfitters, 2/29 – Leap Year Sale! 29% OFF Sitewide →
Goldbelly, 2/29 – 🐸 29 HOURS! Leap Day BOGO SALE 🐸
Priceline, 2/29 – Extra day, extra $29 savings (+ more deals!)
American Eagle, 2/29 – 29% off ALMOST EVERYTHING! Celebrate Leap Day with extra saves 🐸 ⏳
Lane Bryant, 2/29 – LEAP DAY TREAT! $29 cotton bras + SO MUCH MORE
Duluth Trading, 2/29 – 29% OFF Your Order Today Only!
NFLShop.com, 2/12 – Shop Official Super Bowl LVIII Champions Gear
Fanatics.com, 2/12 – Kansas City Chiefs are Super Bowl Champions!
vineyard vines, 2/12 – KC, Celebrate Your Back-To-Back Champs!
Chubbies Weekender, 2/9 – The Weeekender: Tips For Watching The Big Game Like A Freakin’ Pro
Macy’s, 2/8 – 🏈 Hosting this Sunday? These picks will make it even more epic
Crate & Barrel, 2/9 – Shop up to 20% off everything you need for a game-day feast!
Scout from BARK, 2/11 – The only Super Bowl your dog cares about 👉
Huckberry, 2/11 – Hail Mary for 45% OFF
YETI, 2/9 – Cover The Spread This Sunday
Clinique Online, 2/12 – The happiest Valentine’s fragrances 🧡 25% off today.
Chanel, 2/12 – Final hours for complimentary overnight shipping
Scout from BARK, 2/14 – Does your Valentine have stinky breath? 🐶😬
Petco Love, 2/20 – Open for the best love story ever
Neiman Marcus, 2/15 – Wedding looks for showers, rehearsals & the big day
Art.com, 2/14 – 🐲 Usher in the Lunar New Year
Crate & Kids, 2/24 – Shop our Easter Gift Guide (it’s March 31 this year!) →
Big Lots, 2/23 – Shop limited-time bargains during the Tax Refund Event!
Williams Sonoma, 2/9 – It’s National Pizza Day! 🍕 Celebrate with 20% OFF Breville Smart Oven® Pizzaiolo (+ ships FREE)
Abercrombie & Fitch, 2/14 – You in these skirts…
Peloton, 2/24 – Introducing YouTube TV on Peloton Entertainment
Neiman Marcus, 2/21 – Veronica Beard debuts the perfect knit jacket
The North Face, 2/27 – FUTURELIGHT: Ultra-breathable waterproof protection.
AKHG By Duluth, 2/24 – 30% OFF The Fastest-Drying Shirt In The Wild
MASS MoCA, 2/20 – Announcing THE PLASTIC BAG STORE, Opening May 9
Nintendo, 2/27 – Happy Pokémon Day!
Scout from BARK, 2/18 – YOU GET A BED 🐶 YOU GET A BED 🐕 YOU GET A BED 🐕🦺
AutoZone, 2/12 – Restore your engine to run like new
Levi’s®, 2/24 – More than blue jeans
Panty Party from Victoria’s Secret, 2/9 – 7 Pairs, $35—The Math is Mathing
Quiksilver, 2/23 – What’s The Magic Length For Boardshorts?
Banana Republic, 2/27 – BR x thredUP: Extend the life of pre-loved styles.
Vuori, 2/14 – Vuori x Exos
Gap, 2/9 – NEW DROP: DAP x GAP
Columbia Sportswear, 2/28 – $20 off $100+ when you say yes to texts! 📱
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
3 Benefits of a Customer Data Platform
Everybody Hates Your Brand podcast: Personalization & Its Limits
2024 State of Email Trends Report
Surveys, Polls, Forms, & Progressive Profiling: Writing Questions that Deliver Valuable Insights
Email Marketing Trends for 2024: Competitive Differentiators
Email Marketing Trends for 2024: Unproven Opportunities
AI Copyright Infringement: People vs. Machines
Email’s Not Dead Podcast: The Latest Changes to Email Marketing
The Fifth Quarter: Navigating the Post-Holiday Season [with On-Demand Webinar]
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
