Email Marketing RulesEmail & Coffee Podcast: ‘The Strategy Comes First’
Posted on April 27, 2023
I join Joi Brooks, the host of the Email & Coffee Podcast, to chat about email marketing strategy. During our conversation, we talk about…
- Email marketing education
- The biggest design tip to drive results
- Building interest and nurturing B2B leads
- Desiloing marketing and omnichannel customer behavior
- The critical zero stage of email interactions
- How to create great customers
- Focusing your email content on the HOW, not the WHAT
- How too many marketers settle for “good enough” results
- The need for a broad understanding of email marketing, even among specialists
- The evolution and expansion of email marketing
- Generative AI
- The tension between personalization and privacy
- Data collection, behavioral signal strength, and avoiding creepiness
- Return on touch
- And much more!
Or get Email & Coffee wherever you get your podcasts.
Digital Marketing Redesigns: Our Process for Success
Posted on April 26, 2023
No brand is static. Its business priorities and goals are always evolving. Its technological and channel capabilities are evolving. And its audience and competitors are evolving. One of the ways to stay appropriately positioned in the midst of all of those evolving factors is to do regular digital marketing redesigns.
But what does a good redesign process look like, and who should be involved? We’ll answer those questions and more…
How Much Harder Has Email Marketing Become?
Posted on April 24, 2023
I celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the 1st edition of my book, Email Marketing Rules, last month by releasing an updated and greatly expanded 4th edition. A few stats:
- The 4th edition has 53% more must-follow and recommended rules than the 1st edition (184 vs. 120)
- The 4th edition’s glossary contains 143% more terms (282 vs. 116)
- The 4th edition is more than three times longer (677 pages vs. 214), and broken out into two volumes—one focused on the 184 rules and the other focused on strategic frameworks and checklists
That begs the question: Has email marketing become 50% more difficult? Or, heaven forbid, 200% more difficult?
The answer to that second question, thankfully, is a resounding No. However, the answer to that first question is absolutely Yes.
6 Loyalty Program Trends to Watch
Posted on April 14, 2023
To stay aligned with consumer wants and needs, loyalty programs must constantly be evolving. That’s never been more true than now, which loyalty programs are experiencing nothing short of a renaissance.
Here are the six biggest trends that we’re seeing in the loyalty space.
AI-Generated Text: Generative AI Concerns & Opportunities for Marketers
Posted on April 10, 2023
Ready or not, we’re rapidly heading into a world where generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Dall-E, and others do more of marketers’ day-to-day work. That transition is not much in question. The only question is how well your organization makes that transition.
To make that transition as smoothly as possible, we recommend taking a cautious and realistic approach toward the here-and-now of these technologies, while keeping an optimistic long-term view. That starts with having a solid understanding of how these technologies work, including what they’re capable of and what they’re not.
Having that understanding will help you deploy generative AI in ways that will help your business grow, and either avoid or safeguard against situations where AI leads to costly errors or embarrassing customer experiences.
Because the issues and use cases around AI-generated text and images are different, we’ll address generative AI for images separately and focus this post on generative AI for text. Let’s start by explaining…
The 5 Biggest Changes from a Decade of Email Marketing Change
Posted on April 7, 2023
Anytime I see someone complaining about how email marketing is old and hasn’t changed in decades, it just confirms for me that they don’t know anything about email marketing. The truth is that email marketing has undergone tremendous changes, even just in the past 10 years.
This has been top of mind for me personally as last month was the 10th anniversary of the release of the first edition of my book, Email Marketing Rules. To mark the occasion, I’ve released an updated and greatly expanded 4th edition, which includes a Preface that recounts 11 major changes that have happened just since 2013.
Here, I’d like to focus in on five of those changes…
Second Quarter 2023 Holiday Marketing Quarterly
Posted on April 5, 2023
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 2022 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
- Audience Acquisition Source Optimization
- Unsubscribe Process Optimization
- Improving Analytics & Reporting
- Experimentation & Testing
- Accelerating Campaign Build Processes
For the full checklist…
>> Get the Holiday Marketing Quarterly for free via a no-form download
The Last Word on March 2023
Posted on April 3, 2023
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
3 Ways Data Can Steer You Wrong—and How to Glean Better Insights (MarTech)
100 Abandoned Cart Email Subject Lines — and How To Create More (Constant Contact)
The Price Of Privacy: Data Subject Requests Cost $648,000 Per Million Identities (MediaPost)
The new Outlook for Windows (Dev)
Gmail Scribble: Google Brings Generative AI To Its Email Service (MediaPost)
AI and Email: Subject Lines and Preheader Text, Part 1 (Email Optimization Shop)
How to Develop Your Email Writing Style: Hands-on Guide + 5 Examples (Userlist)
One Remarkable Thing About Email. (RPE Origin)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
Do your potential buyers need that discount? Or would they buy anyway with a different incentive like education, relationship building, peer reviews, or unique use cases?
Incentives don’t have to be monetary. https://t.co/KLDoGsREPE
— Val Geisler (@lovevalgeisler) March 21, 2023
“AI Written, AI Read” – new cartoon and post https://t.co/ZjE99F5X1g#marketing #cartoon #marketoon pic.twitter.com/KzoVPzHE1o
— Tom Fishburne (@tomfishburne) March 27, 2023
Noteworthy subject lines
The Metropolitan Museum, 3/10 – Art in your inbox: Women’s History Month
Urban Outfitters, 3/15 – G.T.F.OUTSIDE SALE · 30% off spring styles
Kohl’s, 3/6 – Save 25% on Sonoma Goods for Life outdoor decor 😎
Bass Pro Shops, 3/13 – Gear Up For Your Next Kayak Adventure
ECCO USA, 3/5 – Our most-loved styles get a spring refresh
GapCash, 3/5 – Dive into all our newest swimwear
Abercrombie & Fitch, 3/23 – Cue the outdoor activities.
Nordstrom, 3/27 – The transitional tops you need now
katespade.com, 3/13 – Save these for a rainy day
Crate & Barrel, 3/20 – THE GRILL GUIDE | Our pro tips, plus new grills & pizza ovens →
Williams Sonoma, 3/11 – Join us at your local Williams Sonoma store this Sunday to learn how to sous vide
West Elm, 3/11 – Update your space in 1 step ✅
Art.com, 3/7 – Turn their room into the cool kid space!
Crate & Kids, 3/3 – ★★★★★ Easter gifts
Michaels, 3/27 – PEEPS are here! 🐣 Shop our collection of creative crafts and sweet treats.
Big Lots, 3/13 – 🐰 Hop to it! 25% OFF Easter décor & floral!
Bass Pro Shops, 3/3 – Adventure Season Is Here!
Abercrombie & Fitch, 3/12 – Pack your bags and let’s go.
Clinique Online, 3/3 – SPF is your BFF year-round 💛
Gap, 3/11 – LBP for work IRL
IKEA, 3/31 – Keep crossing off the college checklist!
Target, 3/17 – Trending new basics you can pair so many ways.
J.Crew, 3/21 – Celebrating 40 years of J.Crew
Clinique Online, 3/31 – We love a science moment 🔬
Williams Sonoma, 3/6 – Introducing: Jura E6 Fully Automatic Espresso Machine
Clinique Online, 3/7 – 🙌🏼 Here for the minis! PICK 10 FREE with $50 purchase.
Newbury Comics, 3/13 – Exclusive Deal – 20% Off Blind Boxes In Stores
Urban Outfitters, 3/20 – just dropped: graphic tees from Skim Milk →
The Container Store, 3/15 – The Home Edit Fan Faves + Up To 25% OFF!
Banana Republic, 3/6 – BR Art + WWF: Supporting Conservation Efforts
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
7 Ways to Get More Email Clicks in the Age of MPP
The Biggest Shifts in Email Marketing Trends for 2023
‘Email Marketing Isn’t Taught at Colleges’
What I Got Right and Wrong about the Future of Email Marketing
Email Marketing Trends for 2023: Proven Essentials
The 4th Edition of Email Marketing Rules Released!
Creating & Maintaining Effective Automated Campaigns
7 Ways to Get More Email Clicks in the Age of MPP
Posted on March 31, 2023
By flooding email service providers with auto-generated opens, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) has substantially devalued email opens and dramatically increased the value of the next most common email action—clicks.
In the wake of MPP, clicks have become much more important in two critical areas of email marketing. First, clicks have become central to engagement-based algorithms, such as send time optimization and subject line optimization tools, which were previously almost entirely focused on opens. At the same time, auto-generated opens are now typically ignored by these algorithms. So, generating more clicks from your subscribers helps boost the performance of these engagement-based algorithms, which themselves in turn help deliver more clicks.
And second, marketers are using clicks more actively to manage inactive subscribers. Despite Apple’s move to obscure opens from senders, inbox providers still want brands to only send to recipients who are engaged. And good deliverability is just as important as it’s always been to email marketing success.
The good news here is that Oracle Marketing Consulting has discovered with our clients that a click is twice as strong as an open in terms of qualifying a subscriber as safe to mail. So, while a subscriber might, say, be safe to email if they opened at least one of a brand’s emails in the past 180 days, they’d be safe to mail for 360 days if they clicked. The bad news is that clicks are still far too rare a signal for most brands.
To drive higher click rates, brands need to use a range of strategies that span multiple stages of the Email Subscriber Lifecycle, from acquisition and onboarding through the stages of engagement. Here are seven areas of opportunity.
The Biggest Shifts in Email Marketing Trends for 2023
Posted on March 24, 2023
The turbulence of the past few years has heavily influenced recent email marketing priorities and is shaping the trends that will dominate 2023. We can see those shifts in the results of our fourth-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, and then organized them into adoption-impact quadrants.
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 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 at Oracle Marketing Consulting
Author of Email Marketing Rules
