Email Marketing RulesCreating a Single Brand Experience to Grow Relationships
Posted on February 18, 2020
In Part 1 of this series on personalization, we discussed the importance of responsiveness and reacting to customer behaviors. These leading indicators of activities you want to accelerate or mitigate in a timely fashion are key to building a highly personalized brand experience. Let’s say you’ve nailed that though. What’s next? Data-driven relationship marketing, which takes a huge step toward meeting customers’ ever-growing expectations.
There are a handful of rules here that will help guide you down this path. As you might imagine, the more sophisticated we get, the more complex they can become to manage. For the customer though, it should feel that much more seamless.
Let’s look at the rules for relationship marketing and how to further level up your communications so that your customers know you know (and love) them!
- You are one brand to your customer
- What’s old is new again…introducing RFM 2.0
- Real-time gets real serious
- There is no finish line when it comes to testing
For a full discussion of each of these…
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Email Marketing Trends for 2020: Competitive Differentiators
Posted on February 11, 2020
In the ever-changing world of email marketing, it can be difficult to know where to invest your time and energy. To help you prioritize your email marketing efforts this year, we surveyed Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s more than 500 digital marketing experts, asking them to rate the current adoption of a range of email marketing technologies and tactics as well as their predicted impact during 2020. We then mapped the results into adoption-impact quadrants.
Today, we’re going to look at the Competitive Differentiators, which are those tactics and technologies in the low adoption–high impact quadrant. The technologies and tactics in this quadrant are not completely proven, but companies are already seeing great results from using them. They offer a significant competitive advantage with considerably less risk than our Unproven Opportunities.
But, there are still risks, including the acquisition of smaller providers, frequent process and feature changes as the technology stabilizes, frequent changes in best practices as knowledge rapidly evolves, changing cost structures, scarcity of needed skills, and other issues. These hassles and expenses are easier to accept, however, because most adopters are already seeing a sizable return on investment. Their willingness to accept some uncertainty in exchange for good returns, gives them a distinct advantage over most of their competitors, who have yet to embrace these tactics and technologies.
Of the 26 trends we surveyed our digital marketing consultants about, they put 14 of them in the low adoption–high impact quadrant for 2020. Let’s talk about each of them in turn…
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
The Last Word on January 2020
Posted on February 7, 2020
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Most Email Marketers Will Invest This Year Despite Challenges: Study (MediaPost)
2020 State of Email Report (Litmus)
Sometimes, It’s You (Spamtacular)
Were You Aware of Verizon Media’s “Off Switch” to Email Verification? (Webbula)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
design is 95% designing something, and 95% fiddling with it until the deadline
— Elliot Ross (@iamelliot) January 7, 2020
AWS accidentally sent me their email newsletter template, and it’s kinda great.
cc @dabit3 😉 pic.twitter.com/MYm6nHU3nD
— Kilian Valkhof (@kilianvalkhof) January 13, 2020
I think *think* possibly my test email isn’t rendering correctly… if you zoom in a look closely, there’s a tiny spooky emoji in there too. #emailgeeks pic.twitter.com/CwOLWlNzit
— Sean Hinton (@SeanHinton18) January 21, 2020
PSA: Don’t call it a 1-Click Unsubscribe in your footer if I have to click, then enter my email address 🙄, then click submit, then end up at a preference center, then uncheck all of the lists I’m apparently on, then (finally) click the last submit button.
— Val Geisler 💌 (@lovevalgeisler) January 27, 2020
Emotional Tone for Unsubscribes https://t.co/Ge1oyhnebF pic.twitter.com/lrp3aWHMl8
— Chris Coyier (@emailisgood) January 29, 2020
Noteworthy subject lines
Dick’s Sporting Goods, 1/1 – New Year’s Resolutions Start Here 🎊
T.J.Maxx, 1/1 – 🎉 NEW YEAR = NEW ARRIVALS 🎉
Eddie Bauer, 1/1 – Happy New Year, Happy New Gear!
Bass Pro Shops, 1/1 – NEW fishing gear for 2020
Bed Bath & Beyond, 1/1 — 🥗 + 🚰 + 😴 + 😌 + 🏃 = your resolution to be healthy in 2020! + 20% Off Coupon
Kohl’s, 1/14 – Becoming your best self has never felt so rewarding 😍
Williams Sonoma, 1/14 – 7 kitchen essentials for the new year
Staples, 1/21 – GOALS —> 2020 planners + calendars. Get after it!
Michaels, 1/28 – Save on the gear you need to celebrate football’s biggest matchup!
Williams Sonoma, 1/23 – For the win: game day food favorites
DICK’s Sporting Goods, 1/14 – 🏆 Officially 4X National Champions!
UncommonGoods, 1/28 – They’re back – just in time for ❤️Day
Zales, 1/23 — 💎 Better Than Roses 💎
Everlane, 1/28 – The Forecast Calls For Cashmere
Starbucks, 1/28 – Cozy is a flavor
Saks Fifth Avenue, 1/9 – These 7 hydration heroes will save you skin
Dollar General, 1/8 – Switch to save $3.50 on flu relief at DG.
Nordstrom, 1/22 – New wedding-guest dresses to wear this season
Hobby Lobby, 1/23 – Say “I Do” to 50% off Wedding
Patagonia, 1/14 – Industrial hemp workwear for the greater good
Bass Pro Shops, 1/22 – Johnny Morris honored by National Professional Anglers Association
Banana Republic, 1/22 – Celebrating Melodie McDaniel’s bold vision
Gap, 1/13 – Code MORE is all yours
Olive Garden, 1/22 – How do you say Piccata: [peek-KAH-tah]
Petco, 1/27 – Is howl-itosis a problem? 👅
UncommonGoods, 1/23 – Free 👏 shipping 👏 all day 👏 every day 👏
Kohl’s, 1/27 – 📱 Make your life easier with the Kohl’s App (aka your trusty Kohl’s sidekick)!
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Webinar: The Highest Impact Email Marketing Trends of 2020
How Marketers Should Adapt to Dark Mode for Email
Bringing More of Your Data Together for B2B Audience Building and Segmentation
Design Analytic: Identify and Solve Actual Problems
Take the First Step Toward One-to-One Marketing
Email Marketing Trends for 2020: Unproven Opportunities
Posted on February 4, 2020
In the ever-changing world of email marketing, it can be difficult to know where to invest your time and energy. To help you prioritize your email marketing efforts this year, we surveyed Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s more than 500 digital marketing experts, asking them to rate the current adoption of a range of email marketing technologies and tactics as well as their predicted impact during 2020. We then mapped the results into adoption-impact quadrants.
Today, we’re going to look at the Unproven Opportunities, which are those tactics and technologies in the low adoption–low impact quadrant. The technologies and tactics in this quadrant are not fully vetted and may not generate the adoption or impact necessary to be broadly worthwhile. If all goes well, they offer a sizable competitive advantage to the pioneering companies who embrace them at this stage.
However, there are significant risks that could undermine your investment in part or entirely—including rejection by consumers, inadequate inbox provider support, inadequate digital marketing platform support, the passage of legislative impediments, and other issues. Because of that, big investments of time and energy in these trends should be made cautiously. And for most brands, the best strategy is likely to wait…and let others work out all the details, uncover the best practices, and stress-test the technology.
Of the 26 trends we surveyed our digital marketing consultants about, they put four of them in the low adoption–low impact quadrant for 2020. Let’s talk about each of them in turn…
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Webinar: The Highest Impact Email Marketing Trends of 2020
Posted on January 29, 2020
In the ever-changing world of email marketing, it can be difficult to know where to invest your time and energy. To help you prioritize your email marketing efforts this year, we surveyed Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s more than 500 digital marketing experts, asking them to rate the current adoption of 26 email marketing technologies and tactics as well as their predicted impact during 2020. We then mapped the results into adoption-impact quadrants.
In this 45-minute webinar, we’ll share the overall results of our survey, telling you which email marketing trends our consultants think are Unproven Opportunities, Competitive Differentiators, Proven Essentials, and Established Commodities. We’ll also focus in on four of the highest impact tactics and technologies and discuss how Oracle helps our customers make the most of these trends.
The Highest Impact Email Marketing Trends of 2020
Tuesday, Feb. 25
1pm ET/10am PT
Duration: 45 minutes
Your Presenters:
Chad S. White, Head of Research at Oracle CX Marketing and author of Email Marketing Rules
Todd Smith, Senior Director of Solution Engineering, NAA CX Marketing Sales SE Field
>> Register for the free webinar
How Marketers Should Adapt to Dark Mode for Email
Posted on January 28, 2020
Dark mode is a major trend in user interface experiences across a wide range of apps, including email clients. As support for dark mode continues to grow, the question that our clients are asking us is: Should my company change its designs and code to be compatible for dark mode for email and, if so, exactly what changes should we make?
In this post, we answer the following questions…
- What is dark mode?
- What’s driving dark mode’s popularity?
- Where is dark mode supported?
- Do you need to worry about dark mode for email?
- How can you adapt to dark mode for email?
In answering that final question, we share 8 tactics that you can potentially use to improve your email rendering in dark mode for email. Along the way, we also share examples from our dark mode-optimization efforts on the Oracle CX Marketing Consulting newsletter.
>> Read the full post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Bringing More of Your Data Together for B2B Audience Building and Segmentation
Posted on January 27, 2020
Digital marketing success requires constant improvement, but it’s not always easy to determine best next step toward achieving that improvement. That’s why Oracle developed the Marketing Maturity Model, which helps you determine where your organization is in developing its various capabilities and what should be done to enhance those capabilities.
In this post, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s Otilia Antipa discusses B2B audience building and segmentation capabilities and how to move from a siloed/departmental approach to a cross-channel approach.
For B2B audience building, she talks about how to achieve cross-channel data aggregation and how to reinforce your data acquisition by collecting communication preferences and profile data, doing progressive profiling, and taking other steps. For B2B segmentation, she discusses how to make more data-driven decisions and how to optimize and test on an ongoing basis.
>> Read the full post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Design Analytic: Identify and Solve Actual Problems
Posted on January 22, 2020
Marketers have access to innovative technologies and massive amounts of data to enable connected customer experiences, but time and time again we see our clients struggling to activate it all. Marketers are defining their strategies, selecting key performance indicators, and determining the customer experiences they need to drive those KPIs. Then they’re working with their data scientists and analytics experts to get the reports and models they need.
And that’s the source of the problem.
To understand why, let’s compare marketing to the evolution of car engineering. As automotive technology advanced, the industry recognized the need for a new kind of worker, engineers, who became critical to the design and innovation phases of product development. While modern marketing has acknowledged the need for engineers to execute as our technology and capabilities have advanced, we’ve left our data and analytics teams on the production line.
We’ve siloed our analytics team members, so even though they’re doing what we’re asking them to do, we’re often not driving the results we want. The problem isn’t in the execution, but in the design phase. We’re strategizing and building solutions without one of the key engineers in the room—the analyst.
In this post, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s Kaiti Gary and Jennifer Key argue that design analytics is the solution to this disconnect. They explain who needs to be involved to make design analytics work and what steps are involved. Then they share an example scenario so you can see how design analytics works in action.
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Take the First Step Toward One-to-One Marketing
Posted on January 21, 2020
Ask any marketer how they plan to accomplish their goal of improving customer retention and loyalty and almost without exception they will say, “Better personalization and automation.” That’s code for “We’re not treating our customers like we know them.”
In today’s world where personal curation of products is so high—Design your own tennis shoes! Watch anything, anytime, anywhere! Get vitamins personalized to your gene profile!—expectations of brands to seamlessly communicate with customers is at an all-time high. Missteps can be costly. Just search #[YourBrandName]Fail for a quick sampler.
So how do you systematically get better at personalization and automation? How can you create your first one-to-one marketing experiences? Where do you start to ensure the basic building blocks are in place in order to get to what feels like a personally curated experience across channels?
In this post, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’ Head of Strategic Services, Clint Kaiser, explains that it starts with responding to behaviors. He then recommends five customer actions that you can use to power your automated and personalized campaigns as you start to build one-to-one marketing experiences.
>> Read the full post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Is Mobile-Only Email Design Appropriate for My Brand?
Posted on January 7, 2020
The growth of mobile email reading upended email design a decade ago and gave rise to responsive email design, which is now the dominant approach to crafting emails. However, some brands now see so many mobile opens that they’re considering adopting mobile-only email design. Some pioneering brands already have.
This approach is a throwback to a simpler time. Just like email marketers used to create a single email design optimized for desktops, those who have embraced mobile-only design are creating a single email design optimized for mobile devices.
In this post, members of Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s Creative Services team discuss:
- What mobile-only email design looks like and how it’s different from responsive email design
- The 4 key advantages of using this design approach
- How to determine is adopting a mobile-only design is appropriate for your brand given your audience
- The 3 primary best practices of mobile-only email design
For the full discussion…
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
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
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