Email Marketing RulesThe Last Word on January 2024
Posted on February 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
Don’t Be Too Quick to Dismiss Established Best Practices for Email (MarTech)
Data Regulator Fines HelloFresh £140k for Sending 80M+ Spams (The Register)
Three Words and Four Enemies of 2024 (Christopher S. Penn)
Google Is Making It Easier to Unsubscribe from Emails (The Verge)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
In my view, the greatest challenge we face today isn’t the rapid advancement of AI, but the erosion of our social fabric and the polarization within our society. Our fractured information ecosystems have triggered a dangerous backslide in our democracy, largely driven by the… pic.twitter.com/pwjt0ZaHPA
— Sinead Bovell (@sineadbovell) January 4, 2024
email isn’t always easy and sometimes it helps to outsource your user base, super happy they didn’t pick O365 or G+ but they did pick a previous giant, the Y! https://t.co/KeAetkAKhc pic.twitter.com/5QXfVhN7s0
— Keith Kouzmanoff (@emailmp) January 4, 2024
I see no problem here…
While it’s valid in principle, it’s not likely “your” email, or anyone else’s, it’d worth flagging as bad regardless.
— Matthew Vernhout – @emailkarma@deliverabililt.ie (@EmailKarma) January 2, 2024
Noteworthy subject lines
Nuts.com, 1/1 – New Year, New FREEBIE! 🎁
Omaha Steaks, 1/1 – Let’s start 2024 with $20.24 OFF & FREE shipping.
Clinique Online, 1/3 – Happy New Year! Kickstart a fresh routine.
NORDSTROM, 1/3 — Striking neutrals for 2024
Peloton, 1/14 – Peloton’s 2024 wellness trend predictions
Harley-Davidson, 1/16 – H-D Homecoming 2024 lineup just dropped 👇
kate spade, 1/8 – Welcome to the Year of the Dragon
Big Lots, 1/8 – Christmas Clearance 👉 Thousands of items up to 50% off!
😍 The Victoria’s Secret V-Day Shop, 1/22 – These Push-Ups = ALL The Glam
kate spade, 1/23 – It must be love
Uncommon Goods, 1/8 – 25 Valentine’s Day gift handmade with love
NORDSTROM, 1/16 – Your (gift) guide to love ❤️
Neiman Marcus, 1/25 – Valentine’s Day is almost here!
YETI, 1/25 – Last Chance For Free Valentine’s Day Customization
Scout from BARK, 1/30 – Alert: Your dog is expecting a Valentine’s Day gift 😬
Best Buy, 1/30 – Smart TVs as low as $69.99 is a tempting deal, isn’t it? Deck out your entertainment space
vineyard vines, 1/23 – New Sports Tees For 🏈 ⛷️ 🥍 🏂 🏒 Fans
Williams Sonoma, 1/3 – Now trending: 🍋🍋🍋
American Eagle, 1/8 – Just dropped! AE x Mean Girls 👚📒🔥🎀
The Company Store, 1/8 – Meet Our New Rifle Paper Co. Collection
Clinique Online, 1/13 – Ends soon! Clinique x Kate Spade New York gift.
West Elm, 1/22 – Incredible local designs taking the world by storm
Crate & Barrel, 1/11 – Ready to meet our 1600+ new arrivals?
Royal Caribbean, 1/10 – Icon of the Seas is here!
Patagonia, 1/2 – How to layer for the snow
Columbia Sportswear, 1/16 – Omni-Heat Infinity™ gear that’s good as gold.⭐
Chubbies, 1/16 – Nobody else is doing swim trunks like this
Huckberry, 1/9 – Ambiguous Dress Codes? Cue Smart Casual.
Gap, 1/30 – Loose is the MOVE
West Elm, 1/8 – Our best-selling sofa is curvy, sexy, cool
AutoZone, 1/4 – Overdue for new headlights?
Crate & Kids, 1/8 – Can you guess what our #1 furniture collection is?
Art.com, 1/14 – 📸See the most iconic images of the 20th century
Mike at Moosejaw, 1/8 – I’m giving you 20% off a full price item.
Abercrombie & Fitch, 1/5 — “Thanks, it has pockets!”
Eddie Bauer, 1/8 – Donate $1 And Plant A 🌲 With American Forests!
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Email Geeks Show Podcast: The Trends Shaping the Future of Email Marketing
A Year of Email Subject Lines: Seasonal Inspiration from 2023
First Quarter 2024 Holiday Marketing Quarterly
Effective Customer Messaging during a Weather Emergency
How Testing & Marketing Optimization Drive Website Performance
Accessibility vs. Inclusive Design: 2 Approaches with Similar Goals
The Fifth Quarter: Navigating the Post-Holiday Season [with On-Demand Webinar]
Posted on February 1, 2024
The holiday season doesn’t end on Christmas Day—or even at the end of December. The ripple effects of the holidays can be felt well into the New Year. In acknowledgment of the special conditions that exist from the day after Christmas through mid to late January, many brands recognize this period as Q5, the fifth quarter.
Q5 is characterized by a variety of negative and positive events that all cross-influence each other, including:
- After-Christmas sales
- Gift returns
- Gift card redemptions
- Self-gifting
- The accumulation of holiday consumer debt
Let’s talk about ways to reduce the negative impacts and boost the positive impacts through smart marketing and other strategies, and end by sharing an on-demand webinar about email marketing performance during the 2023 holiday season.
Email Geeks Show Podcast: The Trends Shaping the Future of Email Marketing
Posted on January 30, 2024
The email marketing channel is always evolving. It has changed tremendously over the past decade and forces have already been unleashed that will drive dramatic changes in the years ahead.
In this first episode of the new Email Geeks Show podcast, host Sella Yoffe and I have an extended conversation about those past and future changes, plus a wide range of other topics. Here’s a full rundown of the high points:
- How I got into email marketing
- My content strategy and how I get ideas for my articles
- What’s new in the 4th Edition of Email Marketing Rules
- Why is the 4th Edition in two volumes and who should buy each one
- Why learning email marketing is a challenge
- What are the best resources for learning it
- Why every company is trying to kill email (but can’t)
- What’s unique about the email marketing channel
- Proportional responses with automated emails
- How brands hurt their email programs
- How to appropriately use ROI measurements
- The absence of standards in the email marketing industry
- The future prospects of AMP for Email
- How inbox market share has become uncomfortably concentrated
- The prospect for super-apps in the US
- The impact of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection
- How concerned marketers should be about Gmail tabs
- What trends will have the biggest impact on email marketing going forward
- The usage of AI in email marketing
- How email marketing impacts customer expectations
- How marketers should think about deliverability today
- The five ages of email deliverability, and what the 6th age is likely to be
Listen to the show wherever you get your podcasts or…
A Year of Email Subject Lines: Seasonal Inspiration from 2023
Posted on January 26, 2024
A catchy, yet descriptive subject line can give your campaign a sizable boost. One way to stand out and be more relevant is to have a hook that’s connected to a holiday, season, or occasion—like the nearly 1,000 we highlight in our 2024 Content Calendar Assistant.
To inspire you, we’ve pulled together some of our favorite subject lines from 2023 that do just that. Here’s a month-by-month rundown of our faves.
First Quarter 2024 Holiday Marketing Quarterly
Posted on January 25, 2024
The holiday season doesn’t have an off-season. Having a successful holiday season means executing a successful four-quarter strategy. Oracle Digital Experience Agency’s Holiday Marketing Quarterly gives you a quarter-by-quarter plan for how to achieve more during the critical holiday season with your digital marketing efforts.
The first quarter is focused on seizing opportunities, mitigating risks, learning from the just-passed holiday season, and starting to make the larger structural and programmatic changes necessary to succeed in the new year and during the next holiday season. In this Holiday Marketing Quarterly, we cover:
- Holiday Post-Mortems
- Seasonal Buyer Reactivations
- Email Deliverability Recoveries
- Automated Email Optimization & Growth
- Creative Refreshes
- Upgrades & Expansions of Your Tech Stack
For the full checklist…
>> Get the Holiday Marketing Quarterly for free via a no-form download
Effective 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!
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
