Email Marketing RulesThe 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.
‘Email Marketing Isn’t Taught at Colleges’
Posted on March 22, 2023
How did I get my start in email marketing? What’s my advice for new email peeps? What’s my office setup like? How do I (attempt) to maintain work-life balance? To get the answers to those questions and more…
What I Got Right and Wrong about the Future of Email Marketing
Posted on March 21, 2023
With an updated and greatly expanded 4th edition of my book, Email Marketing Rules, out this month, I wanted to look back at the predictions I made about the future of email marketing in the 3rd edition nearly six years ago. I predicted 11 changes would occur in the next 10 years. A little more than halfway there, how on track are my predictions? Let’s take a look.
Email Marketing Trends for 2023: Proven Essentials
Posted on March 13, 2023
Email marketing is constantly evolving, so it can be difficult to know where to invest your time and energy from year to year. It’s extra challenging in turbulent times like these, when the economic environment, consumer behaviors, and business goals are shifting rapidly.
To help you prioritize your email marketing efforts this year, we surveyed Oracle 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 2023. We then mapped the results into adoption-impact quadrants.
In this post, we’re looking at the Proven Essentials, which are in the high adoption–high impact quadrant. The technologies and tactics in this quadrant are mature, but are still improving and delivering tremendous results.
Our Proven Essentials stand in stark contrast to our Unproven Opportunities, which still have significant risks associated with them and benefits that haven’t fully materialized. Our Proven Essentials also have a risk profile that’s the inverse of our Competitive Differentiators—that is, where our Competitive Differentiators offer a competitive advantage to early adopters, our Proven Essentials put late adopters at a competitive disadvantage.
Of the 26 trends we surveyed our digital marketing consultants about, 14 of them were rated as being in the high adoption–high impact quadrant for 2023. Let’s talk about each of them in turn.
The 4th Edition of Email Marketing Rules Released!
Posted on March 8, 2023
I’m thrilled to announce the release of the 4th Edition of Email Marketing Rules! Updated and greatly expanded, it demystifies this vital channel, guiding you through its complexities to find the best execution for your brand—the one that serves the needs of your business and the needs of your subscribers.
Volume 1 of Email Marketing Rules discusses 184 best practices that help you build productive, safe email lists, set the right program goals, create relevant messages, craft high-performance triggered emails, effectively plan and produce emails, and much more.
Volume 2 of Email Marketing Rules discusses strategic frameworks that help you understand the channel’s unique quirks, grow your audience, collect and use subscriber data, measure program success effectively, steadily improve your email marketing program, and much more—including 6 extensive checklists for auditing and optimizing your targeting, acquisition sources, cross-channel synergies, and more.
Together, both volumes give you the tactics and strategies you need to grow as an email marketer and grow your email program.
Creating & Maintaining Effective Automated Campaigns
Posted on March 7, 2023
Automations are among the highest performing campaigns a brand can send, dramatically outperforming broadcast campaigns. That’s despite typically representing less than 5% of a brand’s campaign volume, and receiving far less attention than they deserve considering their contributions to revenue versus other campaigns.
For instance, triggered and transactional emails generate 20% or more of email marketing revenue for 74% of brands, according to an Oracle Marketing Consulting survey. An astonishing 18% of brands generate the majority of their email marketing revenue from their automations.
Yet, despite that incredibly high performance, marketers chronically underinvest in their automated campaigns, depriving their organizations of even more stellar returns from these messages.
What would you need to do to seize this opportunity? What tasks would you perform if you wanted to dedicate time to your automated campaigns that was more proportional to revenue they’re generating for your marketing program? Making the most of your opportunities with automation requires the prioritization of a set of tasks that evolves as your program becomes more sophisticated.
We see there being five primary sets of tasks, with less sophisticated programs focusing more on the first few tasks and more sophisticated programs the last few…
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
