Email Marketing RulesEffective Customer Messaging during a Weather Emergency
Posted on January 16, 2024
Extreme weather events like blizzards, hurricanes, and wildfires are unfortunately becoming much more common. Brands should be prepared to send their customers messages to help them both prepare for these events and stay informed afterward.
Let’s discuss some key issues that go into creating effective customer messaging during a weather emergency.
How Testing & Marketing Optimization Drive Website Performance
Posted on January 10, 2024
As modern challenges stack up against modern marketers, it is crucial to have an arsenal of tactics to stay ahead of the technological curve. One of the most effective methods of driving website performance in the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing is through marketing optimization, specifically A/B and multivariate testing.
Website testing is the practice of optimizing website performance by comparing multiple versions of a webpage to statistically determine which version performs better. The A/B testing method compares two different versions of a single element on a webpage. On the other hand, multivariate testing (MVT) compares two or more versions of one or more webpage elements simultaneously, giving you valuable insights into which combination of elements works best.
Accessibility vs. Inclusive Design: 2 Approaches with Similar Goals
Posted on January 4, 2024
In my nearly two decades in the email marketing industry, I’ve never seen a topic get people more twisted up than accessibility and inclusive design. Because these issues involve people with a range of permanent challenges, it raises all kinds of social, moral, legal, and personal sensitivities. I’ll confess that I bring my own baggage to this issue, as my father-in-law was wheelchair-bound from having hemiplegia after suffering a stroke.
I’m convinced that neither accessibility nor inclusive design is intrinsically better than the other. Indeed, they have more or less the same goal: Improving the user experience for more people—ideally, the widest spectrum of people.
However, while they have largely the same endpoint, accessibility and inclusive design have very different starting points that are grounded in very different worldviews. Understanding these two perspectives can help you more easily rally people within your organization to implement improvements to your user experience.
The Last Word on December 2023
Posted on January 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’s AI-Powered Spam Detection Is Its Biggest Security Upgrade in Years (Ars Technica)
A Crash Course on List Unsubscribe (Spam Resource)
The Bot Menace: Deciphering the Hidden Threat to Email Campaign Success (Only Influencers)
Hope for the Future of Email: Thoughts from Mark Robbins at Email Camp (Sinch)
2023 in Social Media: The Case for the Fediverse (The Verge)
Four Years After Apple, Google Will Finally Kill Third-Party Cookies in 2024 (Ars Technica)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
These will be the most important cases for journalism and publishing in our lifetime. If AI companies have to cut deals with news organizations and publishers to license their content feeds for use as AI training data, that could save local journalism as well as magazines and… https://t.co/wYmwkusrp5
— Walter Isaacson (@WalterIsaacson) December 31, 2023
Noteworthy subject lines
Fandango, 12/12 – Your 2023 At The Movies
Nintendo, 12/13 – Chad, your Year in Review 2023 is here!
Lonely Planet, 12/30 – Where we traveled in 2023!
Vuori, 12/28 – Vuori’s Year in Review
Fanatics.com, 12/28 – Explore 2023’s Best: Trending Memorabilia and Rare Sales Await!
kate spade, 12/17 – You’ve got invites, we’ve got outfits
ZALES®, 12/31 – Glam Looks For Tonight, Up to 40% Off!🥂
Allrecipes Dinner Tonight, 12/27 – This 5-Ingredient Appetizer Is the First Thing Gone at Parties
Dell Technologies, 12/26 – Tech to power new endeavors in 2024.
Michaels, 12/5 – Kids Club Winter Workshop is here! ❄️ Sign up for 12 FREE creative classes.
REI, 12/8 – Save Up to 50% on Holiday Gifts for Outdoor Memories
Goldbelly, 12/13 – The CHEESIEST Christmas Gifts! 🧀😜
Lowe’s Home Improvement, 12/3 – Your 25 Days of Deals are inside!
Petco’s Days of Deals, 12/13 – 12 Days of Deals starts NOW!
IKEA Family, 12/18 – It’s the final week of 24 days of deals!
Nuts.com, 12/12 – On The 4th Day of Nutty Nights, My True Love Sent To Me…
Omaha Steaks, 12/11 – Get 50% OFF + an EXTRA 20% & save green on Green Monday.
Fanatics.com, 12/16 – Festive Unboxing: Shop Your Holiday Doorbusters Up To 65% Off
Huckberry, 12/17 – Big Gift Energy
YETI, 12/4 – Holiday Customization Ends Tomorrow
Crate & Barrel, 12/3 – Oh-so-fast furniture that arrives in time for the holidays!
Fanatics.com, 12/13 – Gifts Galore –> Order TODAY & Get It By Xmas!
Eddie Bauer, 12/13 – LAST DAY For Delivery By 12/22 With Standard Shipping
The Company Store, 12/12 – ⏳ LAST CHANCE for FREE GROUND SHIPPING
MoMA Design Store, 12/17 – There’s Still Time! (Last-Minute Gifting)
Macy’s, 12/18 – Procrastinated gift shopping? We’ve got you 🎁
vineyard vines, 12/20 – 🎁40% Off Gifts + GET THEM BY CHRISTMAS!🎁
Williams Sonoma, 12/20 – Still need gifts? Order with Next-Day Shipping TODAY for guaranteed Christmas delivery
Redbubble, 12/24 – Cutting it close? Gift instantly with gift cards ⚡️
Lane Bryant, 12/24 – …and to all, a good night! $25 PJ SETS ends soon
Cacique Intimates | Lane Bryant, 12/25 – And now, what you really want…$19.99 & UP BRAS
Abercrombie & Fitch, 12/26 – Jeans still on your wishlist?
Uncommon Goods, 12/27 – 10 things to gift to yourself
Harley-Davidson® Clothing & Gear, 12/30 – TO: You, FROM: You
Neiman Marcus, 12/16 – Shop our Christmas Sale early! Take up to $250 off your next purchase
ECCO, 12/15 – Our End Of Year Sale starts now
Nuts.com, 12/8 – Gone By New Year’s Day 🎁✨
Bitly Team, 12/7 – [Gift Guide] 5 Things to Buy Instead of Bitly
Banana Republic, 12/25 – Holiday gifting with @laurandnicolas
Williams Sonoma, 12/16 – TUCCI by GreenPan™: beauty meets high performance
West Elm, 12/1 – Inside celeb stylist & designer Kate Young’s home
AKHG By Duluth Trading, 12/29 – Introducing: AKHG® FITNESS
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
3 Tailwinds Driving Focus on Building Direct Customer Relationships
TimTalk Webcast: What Keeps Me Awake at Night about Generative AI
Black Friday Week: 3 Key Email Marketing Insights
4 Stakeholders Every Email Marketing Program Has & What They Want
4 Major Factors Impacting Email Marketing Performance This Holiday Season
Happy Holidays!
Posted on December 25, 2023
Wherever you are, whatever you celebrate, my family and I wish you all the best this holiday season. See you in the New Year, EmailGeeks!
3 Tailwinds Driving Focus on Building Direct Customer Relationships
Posted on December 20, 2023
It’s never been one marketing channel versus other channels, because it’s always been all marketing channels in coordination with each other—and, increasingly, all marketing channels in tight orchestration with each other. That said, three major digital marketing trends are causing brands to increase their focus and investments on email, SMS, loyalty, and other marketing channels where they have the most control over building and reaching their audiences.
- Social media is stagnating overall, and key platforms are declining or at risk of serious declines
- Stronger privacy protections on various digital platforms are undermining advertising and data collection used for targeting
- Generative AI is set to reduce search traffic, particularly for unbranded search terms
Let’s talk about each of these trends in turn.
TimTalk Webcast: What Keeps Me Awake at Night about Generative AI
Posted on December 18, 2023
Generative AI has more upside than downside, but that doesn’t make the potential harms any less real. I join TimTalk host Tim Hughes to discuss some of the worries I wrote about in one of my MarketingProfs columns.
Specifically, we talk about my worries that…
- GenAI will ultimately cost many people their jobs
- Companies won’t stop at outsourcing the ‘burnout’ or low-value work
- Companies won’t reinvest the time saved by GenAI
- Companies will create digital doppelgängers of employees or influencers
- Art and craft will be reduced to ideas
- Brands won’t be transparent about their GenAI use
- Content creators will become content editors
- GenAI will cause reciprocity to break down
For the full discussion…
Black Friday Week: 3 Key Email Marketing Insights
Posted on December 15, 2023
The time period from the start of the week of Black Friday through Cyber Monday is the critical beating heart of the holiday season for business-to-consumer brands. Here are three key takeaways for retail and ecommerce marketers:
- Seize the opportunity to get in front of eager buyers
- Expand your email audience…carefully
- Maximize your envelope content’s impact
4 Stakeholders Every Email Marketing Program Has & What They Want
Posted on December 8, 2023
Email marketing is as powerful as it is complicated—and that complexity is slowly growing over time. The reason it’s so complex boils down to one simple fact: Email marketing has multiple stakeholders, each with their own agenda and priorities.
Email marketers have the challenging job of satisfying all of those stakeholders and balancing their sometimes competing demands. Let’s talk about who each of these stakeholders are and, more importantly, what they each want from email marketers.
4 Major Factors Impacting Email Marketing Performance This Holiday Season
Posted on December 6, 2023
It’s not enough to have meaningful external benchmarks and solid internal benchmarks. Marketers need the right perspective and context to properly use those benchmarks and to appropriately interpret their current results. That’s especially true during fast-moving peak seasons, like the holiday season for retailers and ecommerce brands.
When measuring your email marketing performance this holiday season, you’ll want to be mindful of several factors. We discuss a wide range of macro economic and channel factors in the on-demand webinar including in this post, but we’d like to highlight the four factors we think are impacting email marketing results the most this year.
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
