Email Marketing RulesHow to Overcome Common AI Mistakes [with on-demand webinar]
Posted on November 1, 2024
While generative AI and machine learning tools have much to offer in terms of improving workflows, speed to market, and overall effectiveness across many applications, many organizations are wasting more time and resources chasing AI than actually executing it with meaningful results.
To succeed with AI, brands need to three major elements in place:
- The right strategies, people, and processes
- Capable technology and high-speed infrastructure
- Quality data
When one or more of those elements are lacking, it creates a significant barrier. In our work with clients and through our work with partners, we’ve seen five major types of problems come up again and again. In the 41-minute on-demand webinar below, we discuss those barriers, share lots of examples, and talk about solutions. However, in the remainder of this post, we spotlight those five barriers and summarize how to overcome them.
BIMI Email Standard Gets Big Boost by Becoming Less of a Standard
Posted on October 29, 2024
New moves by Google and Apple have given the Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) standard a huge boost. However, those same moves have fractured the email standard by creating multiple paths to various levels of compliance at various inbox providers.
Before getting into those new developments, let’s review the core benefits of BIMI and why it was created by a consortium of inbox providers and email industry vendors.
How to Leverage Email Marketing During the 2024 Holiday Season
Posted on October 18, 2024
The holiday season is the most critical time of the year for most B2C brands and is the most impactful time of the year for email marketing. Even with substantially higher email frequencies, revenue per email spikes during the holiday season.
To help you get more out of your email marketing efforts during the 2024 holiday season, I join 9 other email marketing experts to share tips to make the season bright. We talk about:
- Leveraging advanced segmentation and personalization techniques to create highly targeted campaigns
- Optimizing triggered email workflows for maximum impact and efficiency
- Incorporating interactive elements (GIFs, videos, gamification) to enhance engagement and drive conversions
- Crafting compelling and unique subject lines to capture attention in crowded inboxes
- And more
Promotions Tab Hysteria Is Back! (Thanks, Apple)
Posted on October 16, 2024
More than a decade after Gmail pioneered tabbed inbox interfaces, and many years after other major inbox providers add tabs to their inboxes, Apple Mail has followed suit with its iOS 18 release. But despite the laggard non-novelty of this change, Apple Mail’s hefty market share has the email marketing industry working itself up into a froth again and bad advice is resurfacing.
If the level of concern about tabs is rising at your organization, here are some things to keep in mind.
Differentiate Your Messages with These Email From Name Extension Strategies
Posted on October 14, 2024
Your email from name or sender name is like the logo on your storefront. You’d never lightly change your brand name. You want to be instantly recognizable, whether it’s from the curb or in the inbox. You also want to fully leverage all the investments you’ve made in your brand—which your brand name and logo represent—via advertising, marketing, store environments, and customer experiences.
While you’d surely hesitate to change your brand name, most companies wouldn’t hesitate to hang signs in their windows or big banners on their store facade to communicate what’s happening in their store right now. This is essentially the opportunity that brands have with email from name extensions.
This opportunity exists because most brands’ names don’t take up all of the characters available to them in the friendly from field in the inbox. For example, Gmail displays approximately 20 characters of the from name, and the iPhone’s native email client displays 20-25 characters of a from name, depending on the day of the week that the email was delivered and when the recipient reads the envelope content. So if your brand name is, say, 10 characters long, then you have a solid 10 characters left that you can use to say something else to enhance your message.
Taking advantage of this opportunity can increase your unique open rates by 1.3%, according to Oracle Digital Experience Agency research that compared the performance of campaigns that used from name extensions and those that didn’t. Only 40% of brands use from name extensions for any of their email campaigns, so many organizations are missing out on this relatively easy-to-execute tactic.
If you’re unsure of how to use those extra characters, we have some suggestions based on what we’ve seen brands do and what we’ve done with our clients.
Fourth Quarter 2024 Holiday Marketing Quarterly
Posted on October 10, 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 this critical time of the year with their email marketing and other digital marketing channels.
The fourth quarter is focused on wrapping up your final prep and then taking action during the holiday season to maximize results and minimize problems. In this Holiday Marketing Quarterly, we cover:
- Engaging Seasonal Buyers
- Adjusting Automated Campaigns
- Leveraging New Capabilities
- Using Cross-Channel Synergies
- Doing Incremental A/B Testing
- Finalizing Your Plans
>> Get the Holiday Marketing Quarterly for free via a no-form download
4 Ways to Boost Digital Marketing Margins When Discounting
Posted on October 8, 2024
Discount messaging is a staple of holiday messaging. In fact, 56% of the subject lines used by retail and ecommerce brands for their 2023 holiday email campaigns mentioned discount amounts, according to Oracle Digital Experience Agency research. And, of course, many more campaigns featured discounts without mentioning them in their subject lines.
But just because discounts are highly anticipated by consumers during the holidays doesn’t mean brands have to give away margin needlessly. Here are four tactics that help you clawback unnecessary discount dollars.
6 Common Accessibility Myths that Cost Brands Customers
Posted on October 7, 2024
The No. 1 impediment to creating more accessible and inclusive digital experiences is false preconceptions. When we have baseline misunderstandings and misconceptions about how our customers interact with our brands, we automatically limit ourselves from finding appropriate solutions.
In this blog post, we share a 43-minute on-demand webinar that breaks down a number of accessibility myths, discusses accessibility solutions, and shares advice from our Accessibility & Inclusive Design Ideas checklist (free, no-form download). However, the post also busts the six biggest accessibility myths.
Apple iOS 18: The Most Important Changes for Marketers
Posted on October 4, 2024
Centered around Apple Intelligence, the updates and new product features in Apple iOS 18 offer some significant improvements for consumers, including a smarter Siri and a variety of AI tools. While most won’t have a noticeable impact on digital marketers, let’s talk about a few that will:
- Apple Mail inbox tabs
- AI Summaries in Apple Mail
- RCS support in Apple Messages
>> Read the full post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
The Last Word on September 2024
Posted on October 1, 2024
A roundup of digital and email marketing articles, posts, and social buzz you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
The Last Days of Last-Click? (eMarketer)
Elusive AI ROI Doesn’t Mean the Bubble Will Burst (CMSWire)
Gmail Allows More Senders to Protect Their Brand Using BIMI Common Mark Certificates (Google Workplace Updates)
Consumers Will Sign Up for Retail Newsletters If… (Chain Store Age)
Google and Apple Face Billions in Penalties After Losing E.U. Appeals (New York Times)
What’s the Average Lifespan of a Website? 10 Factors in Website Longevity (Andy Crestodina)
My Go-to Solution to Increase Revenue During the Holiday Rush (Only Influencers)
Five Fundamental Truths: How B2B Winners Keep Growing (McKinsey & Co.)
The Man Quietly Rewriting American Privacy Law (Politico)
Insightful & entertaining social posts
The world belongs to optimists, because if you’re going to do anything big, you have to believe it’s going to happen, otherwise it never will
— Logan Kilpatrick (@OfficialLoganK) September 13, 2024
Noteworthy subject lines
Patagonia, 9/30 – Our vote’s on Earth
Harley-Davidson, 9/6 – A Salute to Service
VS PINK, 9/17 – Halloween Recs 🧟♀️ Look Alive—or Not
Forever 21, 9/29 – 30% OFF Spooky Shop 👻🖤
Williams Sonoma, 9/22 – A Thanksgiving table to remember 🦃
Williams Sonoma, 9/15 – Your stress-less Thanksgiving checklist is here
vineyard vines, 9/30 – NEW: Limited-Edition Breast Cancer Awareness Tees
FIGS, 9/29 – They Said F*** Cancer and Beat It
West Elm, 9/22 – ‘Tis the season to get ahead of holiday festivities
Clinique Online, 9/19 – A+++ offer. Take 25% sitewide. 🙌 🙌 🙌
Levi’s®, 9/8 – Football season is on 🏈
Big Lots, 9/7 – Use your coupon now for National Tailgating Day!
Forever 21, 9/17 – Jackets & Outerwear 🧥🍂
Quiksilver, 9/18 – Get Your Long Sleeves Ready 🍂
Neiman Marcus, 9/2 – Fall boots in thigh-high lengths you’ll love
Michaels, 9/23 – We’re your concert prep HQ! Style your look with our must-have supplies and DIYs. ✨ 💕
Crate & Barrel, 9/23 – New furniture. By next week.
The Container Store, 9/23 – No Time To Organize? Let Us Do It!
J.Crew, 9/4 – Introducing Fall 2024 with Demi Moore
Crate & Barrel, 9/15 – How @lonefoxhome found his *perfect* chair
Crate & Kids, 9/15 – ICYMI: Our new Jeremiah Brent collab is here!
Columbia, 9/18 – Mickey’s Outdoor Club collection coming soon!
Exclusive Offer From Victoria’s Secret, 9/17 – Hurry—Your $15 Expires Tomorrow
Gap, 9/29 – You have 50% off waiting + app-only bonus 10%
Columbia, 9/28 – $20 off $100+ when you say yes to texts! 📱
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Understanding AI: 5 Frameworks for Marketers
Accessibility & Inclusive Design Ideas to Explore
Litmus’s State of Email in Lifecycle Marketing Report
AI Opportunities Throughout the Email Production Process
Get Inspiration from Our Holiday Subject Line Word Cloud
Why Email Marketers Shouldn’t Bother Fighting the Power
Holiday Email Subject Line Insights to Boost Your Campaign Results
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
