Email Marketing Rules12 Trends a-Trending: What to Plan for This Holiday Season
Posted on July 28, 2023
The 2023 holiday season is shaping up to be as dynamic and turbulent as the past few have been. But knowing what to expect and proper planning can help make the best of another tough holiday season.
Here are our predictions for 12 trends to account for in your holiday campaign planning process:
- Shopper Anxiety & Uncertainty
- Consumer Financials Weakening
- In-Store Shopping Evolving
- Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection Hits 2-Year Anniversary
- Apple’s Link Tracking Protection Debuts
- Holiday Season Starts in October
- Veterans Day Is in Play This Year
- Sprawl of Marquee Shopping Days
- More Last-Minute Shopping Options
- Leveraging New Tech Capabilities
- Measuring More Holistically
- Hard Landing vs. Soft Landing
For a discussion of each of those trends, plus how marketers should respond…
Digital Marketing Tests to Run in the Runup to the Holiday Season
Posted on July 25, 2023
The back-to-school season, Labor Day, and Halloween represent great opportunities to better align with your ever-changing customers before heading into the all-important holiday season, when digital marketing misalignments are most costly.
- Is your branding strong?
- Are your offers clear and focused on what’s in it for your audience?
- Are we making it easy for our audience to do what we want them to do?
- Are we differentiating ourselves in the inbox?
- What words and imagery are your customers responding to most?
- Is your audience feeling the pinch financially or spending freely?
The way to answer these questions and others is to experiment and run A/B tests. Here are eight digital marketing tests we highly recommend.
5 Foundational Marketing Books You Need to Read
Posted on July 17, 2023
Here at Oracle Marketing Consulting, we know we’re only as good as our ideas and our ability to execute. In other words, we’re only as good as our people. That means we not only aim to hire the most talented strategists, designers, analysts, coders, and account managers around, we are also constantly looking for ways to help them become even better at helping our clients exceed their business goals.
One of the ways we do that is by recommending books that can make them more effective—not only as marketers, but as team members and leaders. We’d like to share those recommendations with you, too.
Third Quarter 2023 Holiday Marketing Quarterly
Posted on July 13, 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 you a quarter-by-quarter plan for how to achieve more during this critical time of the year.
The third quarter is focused on the final prep for the start of the holiday season. In this Holiday Marketing Quarterly, we’ll cover:
- Campaign Planning
- Workload Management
- Contingency Planning
- Audience Optimization
- Performance Monitoring Plans
- Solidifying Your MarTech Stack
For the full checklist…
>> Get the Holiday Marketing Quarterly for free via a no-form download
Making Seasonal Adjustments to Automated Campaigns to Boost Results
Posted on July 10, 2023
Automated campaigns—whether sent via email, SMS, or mobile push—perform so well that they’re often overlooked as not needing attention. However, it’s because of their high engagement and conversion rates that we should be constantly giving automated campaigns extra attention and trying to make them even better.
This is especially true during the holiday season, which is make-or-break for most B2C brands. Here are several areas to focus on…
The Last Word on June 2023
Posted on July 6, 2023
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Beyond Belt-Tightening: How Marketing Can Drive Resiliency during Uncertain Times (McKinsey & Co.)
The Font-Size Issue (Type E)
5 Steps to Mastering the Modern Martech Landscape (RPE Origin)
Why Newsletters Are Set to Be the Hottest Side Hustle of 2023 (Fast Company)
I Spy AI: Half Of Consumers Can Spot An AI-Written Email (MediaPost)
Why and How to Use Loss Aversion in Email Marketing (Plus 4 Examples) (Holistic Email Marketing)
Email Warming Services: Manipulating Spam Filters (EmailKarma)
Big Tech Is Bad. Big A.I. Will Be Worse. (New York Times)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
When you collect customer data, you enter into an obligation to use that data.
So don’t collect information without a plan to execute.
And for the love of god, don’t ignore it.
(“How often should we email you?” is the biggest culprit here)
— Alex (@heyitsalexP) June 1, 2023
There’s no AI in email
— Elliot Ross (@IAmElliot) June 27, 2023
Being smart isn’t about having the right answers. It’s about knowing how to build a network of people who do.
— Mathew Sweezey (@msweezey) June 30, 2023
Noteworthy subject lines
Columbia Sportswear, 6/2 – PRIDE outside, today and every day.
Abercrombie & Fitch, 6/24 – PROUD AND LOUD 🏳️🌈
katespade.com, 6/6 – How we celebrate pride & joy
J.Crew, 6/5 – J.Crew Pride 2023
Lowe’s Home Improvement, 6/8 – Now’s the time to save big on what Dad will love.
Crate & Barrel, 6/9 – Get Father’s Day gift recs from our team
IKEA, 6/27 – College living, A-Z!
REI, 6/12 – A Gift Card for Them, a Bonus for You 🎓👔
Nordstrom, 6/16 – It’s wedding season—let’s do this
Zales, 6/29 – Black Friday In July! Up to 50% Off 🔥🔥🔥
Crate & Kids, 6/2 – NEW backpacks that’ll make a splash at camp ☀️
Michaels, 6/27 – 🚙 Parents: Save on kids’ crafts to take on the go this summer!
West Elm, 6/2 – Patio party starters!
vineyard vines, 6/2 – Comfy Cashmere & Polished Prints
Everlane, 6/2 – We Have New Summer Dresses
Nordstrom, 6/2 – Shorts weather, we’re ready for you
Everlane, 6/20 – Crochet Tops Are Back In Stock
Superdry, 6/22 – Ready for t-shirt weather?
Nordstrom, 6/6 – Now entering your skirt era
J.Crew, 6/2 – Nautical nods, new textures & more of Olympia’s picks…
Victoria’s Secret Semi-Annual Sale, 6/8 – Our Biggest Sale of the Year is Online Now
West Elm, 6/5 – Outside-the-box gallery wall ideas
Art.com, 6/4 – What’s your dining room’s personality?
Clinique Online, 6/30 – 💋 Tips for lips.
MyCollection by Lifetouch, 6/8 – Collect, celebrate and cherish every milestone of Dexter.
The North Face, 6/20 – Our Nuptse jacket is flying off the shelves
Williams Sonoma, 6/22 – How old are your nonstick pans?
YETI, 6/12 – Our First Ever Cast Iron Skillet
Magic: The Gathering, 6/8 – Here’s your preview card from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth™ 👀
Big Lots, 6/29 – Check out our new Broyhill collection! 😍
RH, 6/16 – Now Open. RH England, The Gallery at the Historic Aynho Park.
Michaels, 6/29 – Hey VIP, want a 25% off coupon + the latest scoop on deals? 🕶️ Sign up for texts →
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Hot Digital Marketing Redesign Trends: Changes Brands Are Making Now
The Fifth Age of Email Deliverability
Sinch CX Education Podcast: Bridging the Gap between Omnichannel Marketing & CX
Loyalty Program KPIs: Measuring Health and Performance
The Future of Content Marketing: 5 Predictions
Mailbox Providers Retiring Inactive Accounts: The Risks & How to Respond
6 of My All-Time Favorite Quotes about Marketing
Is Your Brand Trusted Significantly More than ChatGPT?
Posted on July 5, 2023
The answer to that question will determine which brands truly have credibility and authority in the years ahead and which do not.
Those who are more trustworthy than generative AI engines like ChatGPT will:
- Be destinations for answer-seekers, generating strong direct traffic to their websites and robust app usage
- Be able to build large first-party audiences via email, SMS, push, and other channels
Both of those will be critical for any brand wanting to insulate themselves from the search engine optimization (SEO) traffic loss that will be caused by generative AI.
Hot Digital Marketing Redesign Trends: Changes Brands Are Making Now
Posted on June 27, 2023
At Oracle Marketing Consulting, we’re constantly involved in major redesigns of our clients’ digital marketing campaigns. From year to year, the themes and trends driving redesigns change. Here are the biggest factors propelling brands to undergo redesigns right now:
- More Content Driven by Machine Learning & AI
- More Live Content
- Adapting to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection
- Becoming More Inclusive
- Optimizing for Dark Mode
For a full discussion of each of those trends and more…
The Fifth Age of Email Deliverability
Posted on June 23, 2023
The feedback mechanisms, controls, and algorithms that inbox providers use to decide whether to block, junk, or deliver email messages to their users continues to evolve. Since the 1990s, there have been five ages of email deliverability, each of which was ushered in by the arrival of a major change:
In the First Age of Email Deliverability, there were no rules and few if any consequences for bad behavior. Email users were more or less at the mercy of senders, some of whom scraped, bought, and sold email addresses and didn’t always honor unsubscribes.
In the Second Age of Email Deliverability, inbox providers armed their users with the “report spam” button, which allowed them to block future emails from offending senders. Moreover, senders who had complaint rates that were too high saw their emails junked or blocked across entire mailbox providers. As a consequence, senders bloated their lists with inactive subscribers who didn’t complain, but didn’t do anything else either.
Sinch CX Education Podcast: Bridging the Gap between Omnichannel Marketing & CX
Posted on June 21, 2023
“We are constantly chasing consumer expectations, and omnichannel is a big one where we’ve been way behind for a very long time, so the urgency to catch up is real.” That’s a snippet from my conversation with Sinch CX Education Podcast host Gwen Lafage, where we focus on embracing an omnichannel marketing philosophy and strategy.
During our 43-minute conversation, we talk about:
- Email marketing’s popularity, as well as what confuses marketers about the channel
- The biggest changes and challenges facing digital marketers
- The difference between multichannel and omnichannel
- Why brands need to improve their omnichannel marketing capabilities
- The value and role of different channels in an omnichannel strategy
- How to get started becoming more omnichannel
Listen in wherever you get your podcasts or…
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
