Email Marketing RulesThe Biggest Email Marketing Opportunities for B2B Brands
Posted on April 11, 2024
B2B marketers have tons of upside opportunities to improve their email marketing programs. That’s the positive spin on one of the central findings of the inaugural State of Email Trends report from Litmus and Oracle Digital Experience Agency, which found that B2B brands have adopted a wide range of email marketing trends at substantially lower rates than B2C brands.
I know B2B brands don’t like to be compared to B2C brands. Some think it’s unfair, while others think it’s just inappropriate. Apples and oranges.
However, I’ll confess I think the differences are more like apples and pears at this point. For example, B2B brands used to have very different deliverability circumstances because most businesses ran their own email servers. Today, lots of businesses use G Suite or Office 365, which use the same spam filtering algorithms and email rendering engines as consumer inboxes Gmail.com and Outlook.com. Plus, lots of employees access their work email via Apple Mail and other mobile email apps consumers use, too. And since every B2B customer and prospect is also a consumer, the experiences they have with B2C brands affect their expectations for how B2B brands should treat them.
I’m not denying there aren’t significant differences between B2B and B2C businesses, but they have shrunk over time and don’t justify the differences in adoption of email marketing elements, tactics, and technologies we found in our research. Again, that means B2B brands have many opportunities to take advantage of that can boost the performance of their programs.
Second Quarter 2024 Holiday Marketing Quarterly
Posted on April 9, 2024
The holiday season doesn’t have an off-season. Having a successful holiday season means executing a successful year-round strategy. Oracle Digital Experience Agency’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 2023 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 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 via free, no-form download
When 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.
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
