Email Marketing Rules8 Reasons to Pause Your Digital Marketing Campaigns
Posted on October 5, 2022
The Sept. 8 passing of Queen Elizabeth II prompted many UK brands to suspend their email, SMS, social media, and other digital marketing campaigns out of reverence and respect—as well as out of fear of coming across as insensitive if they were to continue with business as usual. Such moves are wise, as they forgo some engagement and revenue in the short-term in order to avoid backlashes that cause brand damage and audience loss that significantly impact long-term performance.
Sadly, brands have faced an increasing number of circumstances in which they’ve decided it was in their best interest to cancel or delay their digital marketing campaigns, either on a national or regional basis. To respond quickly, your company should agree on the circumstances that would typically lead it to take action.
Consider these 8 reasons to halt your marketing campaigns…
The Last Word on September 2022
Posted on October 3, 2022
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Embracing BIMI: Apple Rolls Out Standard In Its iOS16 Release (MediaPost)
Zoom to Soon Bring Its Email Service: Details (Mint)
What’s Going on with Annotations? (PeakInbox)
12 Reasons User-Generated Content Is Important for Brands [Infographic] (MarketingProfs)
The Top 5 Grammar Rules That can be Broken for Winning Email Copy (Email Design Review)
Email and Business In Ukraine: A Conversation With Dmitry Kudrenko of Stripo.email (Campaign Genius)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
Well played, @gmail. Well played. 💌 https://t.co/a5BpDq7azl
— Lauren Meyer (@LaurenEmailGeek) September 14, 2022
I’m no longer impressed when people claim open rates consistently >50%, if they can’t tell me how many of those were attributed to Apple MPP.
— Matthew Vernhout (@EmailKarma) September 20, 2022
Great email find: Sunset/Unegaged Email by Cuisinart
Fave parts:
* Cute and casual
* Clear options (CTAs) – I normally go for one CTA, but in this instance, it makes sense to have two for options.
* That hard-boiled egg is lyf pic.twitter.com/akXxYaJxWc— Kat Garcia 🚢 eCom Email & SMS (@heykatgarcia) September 2, 2022
Gmail’s approach to Dark Mode stinks. Either allow developers to handle it or leave it alone. This happens way too often. pic.twitter.com/n97YtWPCrf
— Alex Williams (@alexcwilliams) September 20, 2022
Noteworthy subject lines
Zales, 9/11 – 4 Essential Styles Worth the Investment
Burlington, 9/21 – We’re hiring!
Gap Labor Day Event, 9/2 – Staying in < GOING OUT
Quiksilver, 9/2 – Cool Woven Shirts For The Long, Hot Weekend
West Elm, 9/7 – Keep patio season going with cold-weather accessories
Gap Warehouse Sale, 9/7 – That ’90s flannel vibe 👇
Williams Sonoma, 9/11 – It’s officially soup season! Make it from scratch with VITAMIX + free shipping on electrics
Neiman Marcus, 9/8 – Hue knew fall looks could be this vibrant?
Subway Restaurants, 9/17 – 🏈 Kick off the season with Subway ® Catering
Wegmans Meals 2GO, 9/24 – Ordering for a Group? We’ve Made it Easy
Williams Sonoma, 9/5 – It’s never too early for festive planning 🎃🦃🎄
Big Lots, 9/7 – Our ghoul? Save ya 25% on Halloween 👻
Williams Sonoma, 9/26 – Thanksgiving at Ina Garten’s + shop her favorite brands
Uncommon Goods, 9/16 – Yes, those are faint jingle bells in the distance
Crate & Barrel, 9/16 – FIRST LOOK | Holiday 2022
Zales, 9/26 – It’s Never Too Early….
Big Lots, 9/6 – NEW! Disney Pop-Up Shop x the LOT is HERE 👏
Nordstrom, 9/17 – Go to new heights with over-the-knee boots
Lane Bryant, 9/17 – THE POWER SUIT IS BACK.
Express, 9/6 – Meet our Styling Community 😍
Uncommon Goods, 9/14 – “Yessssss 👏” – actual social media reaction
Moosejaw, 9/6 – We want to hear from you. Get a free $10.
REI, 9/28 – See What Gear Won Our Editors’ Choice Awards
Spotify, 9/20 – Hear what the country is listening to
Bass Pro Shops, 9/24 – Watch Missouri Thunder Live!
Patagonia, 9/23 – Watch our new film “The Scale of Hope”
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Webbula: What Are the Top 3 Skills for a Successful Email Marketer in 2023?
Digital Marketers Are Afraid to Make Mistakes: 4 Negative Repercussions
Good Taxonomy Leads to Great Digital Marketing Optimization Opportunities
Email Marketing in Flux: The Biggest Changes Impacting the Channel
Dyspatch: Interview with Chad S. White
Email Deliverability Warning Signs Heading into Holiday Season
10 Common Email Marketing Mistakes that Are *Fairly* Easy to Fix
Webbula: What Are the Top 3 Skills for a Successful Email Marketer in 2023?
Posted on September 27, 2022
Along with 9 other email experts, I share what I think are the top 3 skills that an email marketers need to have to be successful. For me, they need to have:
- Curiosity…about consumer behavior, new platform developments, and more
- A comfort with numbers, as the art and science of email marketing increasingly skews toward the science
- Solid communication skills, as email marketing desilos and becomes an integral part of an omnichannel marketing strategy
To see my full answers, and to see everyone else’s too…
Digital Marketers Are Afraid to Make Mistakes: 4 Negative Repercussions
Posted on September 26, 2022
Basketball hall of famer and greatest of all time Michael Jordan once said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
While athletes, entrepreneurs, and many other professionals have a healthy perspective on failure as a route to success, that’s not always the case with digital marketing professionals. For instance, Oracle Marketing Consulting ran a poll last year asking if digital marketers were hesitant to admit to mistakes for fear of being fired or suffering other repercussions and a shockingly high 78% said yes.
That’s roughly in line with a 2017 poll by Litmus where only 32% of respondents said that email marketing was a failure-friendly channel. In a separate 2016 poll by Litmus, more than 11% of respondents said that they personally knew someone who’d been fired for making an email marketing mistake.
Having a zero tolerance for mistakes in digital marketing is an unrealistic standard that no team can live up to for very long. Such a policy shows an unfamiliarity with the reality of how these channels operate and how digital campaigns are crafted and launched. But more than that, it creates anxiety, secrecy, and risk-aversion that hold digital marketing programs back long-term in four ways…
Good Taxonomy Leads to Great Digital Marketing Optimization Opportunities
Posted on September 22, 2022
Digital marketing is flush with optimization opportunities, but only if you have a highly organized program. A central key to that is having a solid taxonomy, where you use tagging to keep track of various program elements. This kind of tagging system is key to easily and regularly optimizing your:
- Audience acquisition sources
- Calls-to-actions
- Content types
- Campaign performance
Let’s talk about how tagging helps with each of those…
Email Marketing in Flux: The Biggest Changes Impacting the Channel
Posted on September 14, 2022
Email marketing is more powerful than ever, but the strategies and tactics needed to succeed are changing because of 3 mega-trends:
- The sunsetting of third-party cookies driving an increased focus on customer identification and the collection of zero- and first-party data
- Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection forcing marketers to take a holistic, cross-channel approach to measuring performance and selecting safe mailable audiences
- The pandemic-driven consumers behavior changes that reinforce the need for personalization, nimble build systems, and smooth, well-orchestrated omnichannel experiences
For a look at each of those mega-trends…
Dyspatch: Interview with Chad S. White
Posted on September 12, 2022
- What will email marketing look like in 2023, 2024, and beyond?
- Do you think other inbox providers will adopt Mail Privacy Protection?
- Should marketers pay attention to what subscribers say or do?
- Will AMP for Email be a centerpiece of email marketing in 10 years?
Sepy Bazzazi, Growth Marketing Manager at Dyspatch, asked me those questions and more in an interview for the Dyspatch Blog. To see all of my answers…
Email Deliverability Warning Signs Heading into Holiday Season
Posted on September 8, 2022
The last thing email marketers want during the critical holiday season is deliverability problems, which is why many dedicate considerable time during the third quarter to getting their sender reputations and inbox placement rates as healthy as they can get them. However, marketers are facing two unique challenges this year that may foreshadow greater than usual deliverability risks during the all-important fourth quarter.
- The 1-year anniversary of Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection
- A ‘tidal wave’ of listings from the world’s largest blocklist operator, Spamhaus
For a full breakdown of both of those issues by Oracle Marketing Consulting’s Heather Goff…
10 Common Email Marketing Mistakes that Are *Fairly* Easy to Fix
Posted on September 7, 2022
Email marketing is a complicated interplay of tactics and strategies, and it’s easy to make mistakes. I recently wrote about 10 common email marketing mistakes that are easy to fix, and now I’d like to share another 10 common mistakes with fixes that are slightly more involved, but still very much worth your attention.
- Allowing errors to slip through
- Not setting default values for personalization
- Using a no-reply email address
- Not using responsive email design
- Using a one-size-fits-all send time
- Only A/B testing your broadcast campaigns
- Ignoring the natural rate of return
- Not sending your welcome email immediately
- Sending your email in the wrong language
- Not optimizing for dark mode
For a discussion of each of those mistakes and how to fix them…
The Last Word on August 2022
Posted on September 6, 2022
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Did Email Just Defeat Social Media for Good? (Unemployable)
B2B Digital Marketing Trends: Top Channels and Tactics for 2022 (MarketingProfs)
Five Things Your Email Marketer Wants You to Know (Email Snarketing)
Are Surveys Transactional Emails? (Kickbox)
Gmail Is Now Officially Allowed to Spam-Proof Politicians’ Emails (The Verge)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
If you see a great post, save it.
If you get a great sales email, save it.
If you read a great sales page, save it.
Swipe files are extremely valuable.
Build yours up one swipe at a time.
— copyblogger (@copyblogger) August 1, 2022
The more I learn, the more I see great marketing is about listening.
Listening to your audience is the ♥️ of marketing.
— Heike Young (@YoungHeike) August 1, 2022
The hardest part about copywriting is trying to write marketing copy that doesn’t sound like “marketing copy”
The secret?
Steal your copy straight from the mouths of your best customers
— Katelyn Bourgoin ⚡️ (@KateBour) August 1, 2022
We’ve totally been there, @BurgerKing!
You haven’t earned your stripes as an email marketer until you’ve had a Whopper of a campaign blunder! Now you’re one of us! Welcome to the club. #emailgeeks #EmailMarketing #riteofpassage pic.twitter.com/PYtB820Ywi
— Humans of Email (@Humans_of_Email) August 9, 2022
In case you didn’t know, Pokémon emails have been Dark Mode enhanced since January 2022#arizCodesEmail #emailgeekshttps://t.co/kR6hccHMcp pic.twitter.com/gvOCnafELX
— Emmanuel Arizmendi (@arizdesign) August 22, 2022
Noteworthy subject lines
Nordstrom, 8/3 – 5 summer must-haves for casual days
Wegmans Catering on Meals 2GO, 8/13 – 3 Must-Haves for Your Summer Party
Eddie Bauer, 8/13 – ☀️ Summer Fun In Lightweight Basics 🏖️
The Nuts.com Family, 8/18 – Today’s Spotlight: Single Serve Snacks For School✨
Dick’s Sporting Goods, 8/3 – 💰 SAVE on school style! Up to 50% off won’t last long…
Express, 8/5 – We brought in celeb stylists to spill the scoop on fall’s top trends 😍
Big Lots, 8/28 – Up to 25% OFF Halloween Décor? That’s a Hallo-WIN 🎃
West Elm, 8/3 – JUST in! Subtly spooky fall decor
Williams Sonoma, 8/4 – Pumpkin favorites are BACK!
Wegmans, 8/25 – The Season’s Best Tomatoes are Here!
Lane Bryant, 8/5 – The bra that launched 1000s of blissed-out sighs.
Lane Bryant, 8/13 – These jeans? The most iconic yet.
Express, 8/20 – The pant that broke the internet.
Saks Fifth Avenue, 8/27 – These took over everyone’s Wishlist this week
GapCash, 8/21 – Y2K SAYS HEY
Panera Bread, 8/25 – “Yeah, I cook”. Pulls out a Panera® Flatbread Pizza
Zales, 8/18 – 👰 Here Comes The Bridal Sale!
IKEA, 8/17 – Chad, our new collection is all about pausing and reflecting
IKEA, 8/31 – Better days start with smart routines
Gap, 8/4 – 2 ways to shop = 40% OFF on our app -OR- 30% OFF online
Petco, 8/13 – Save 10% on in-store pickup orders today!
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
12 Trends a-Trending: What to Plan for This Holiday Season
Best Days to Send Email Marketing Campaigns This Holiday Season
How to Launch a Successful Holiday Campaign
Optimizing Email Marketing Calls-to-Action: A 4-Point Plan
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
