Email Marketing RulesEmail Newsletters: The New Best Practices
Posted on September 1, 2022
Nothing in email marketing is static, because ESP technology, inbox providers, and—most importantly—consumers are constantly changing. That change extends to the email newsletter, a mainstay of B2B marketing.
To get a read on the latest newsletter trends, I spoke with our Creative Services and B2B teams here at Oracle Marketing Consulting about what they were doing when they overhauled our clients’ newsletters. Consider this your guide to the new best practices for email newsletters. Here are their top recommendations:
- Use single-column layouts
- Adopt modular email architecture
- Personalize content
- Tease content
- Create read magnets
- Make your designs inclusive and accessible
- Differentiate your sender names
- Write descriptive subject lines
- Borrow from B2C email designs
For a discussion of each of these new best practices…
12 Trends a-Trending: What to Plan for This Holiday Season
Posted on August 31, 2022
This year’s 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:
- Plan for high inflation to persist
- Recession fears will heighten shoppers’ concerns
- Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) growing in usage
- Supply chains will remain troublesome
- Continued pressure to reduce online returns
- In-store sales to continue rebounding
- Full impact of Apple’s MPP will be felt
- Early start to holiday season reinforced further
- Veterans Day likely to be affected by elections
- Marquee shopping days flattening out
- BOPIS & curbside key to final week of season
- Adopt more holistic performance measurement
For a full discussion of each of those trends…
Best Days to Send Email Marketing Campaigns This Holiday Season
Posted on August 30, 2022
This good news for this holiday season is that pandemic concerns are easing, which should see many more consumers return to stores for their gift-buying needs. The bad news is that the worst inflation in more than a generation has lots of shoppers in a recession state of mind. That is just one of several major challenges facing B2C brands as they plan their holiday email marketing campaigns.
In this blog post, Oracle Marketing Consulting’s Clint Kaiser talks about:
- The effects of inflation on holiday shoppers
- Mail Privacy Protection’s anniversary
- Accounting for in-store sales rebound
And then he shares an infographic that summarizes how all of this is likely to affect B2C brands’ holiday email marketing strategies and offers notable trends and benchmarks from recent holiday seasons.
Mailmodo Growth Chat: How to Launch a Successful Holiday Campaign
Posted on August 23, 2022
I join Mailmodo CEO Aquibur Rahman on the Growth Chat Podcast to talk about holiday planning, as well as how I got my start in email marketing. I share some of the advice from our Holiday Marketing Quarterly series and discuss a wide range of issues, including:
- How email marketing amplifies existing demand
- How planning for the holidays is a year-round effort
- How consumer behaviors change during the holiday season
- The kinds of messaging and designs that perform well during the holidays
- How the battle for holiday attention is already underway today
- What happens to email engagement during the holidays
- How automation is the secret star of the holidays
- How email marketing can prepare for the holidays now
- Progressive profiling during the holidays
- How to do A/B testing to give yourself a holiday advantage
- The best times to send during the holidays
To learn about those issues and many more…
Optimizing Email Marketing Calls-to-Action: A 4-Point Plan
Posted on August 8, 2022
Email marketers have historically paid a lot of attention to subject line testing, eager to drive higher open rates. But in the age of Mail Privacy Protection, where many opens are being obscured, it’s time for marketers to refocus some of their A/B testing zeal on calls-to-actions to drive much needed clicks.
In working with our clients, we’ve used the following 4-point plan to break down their CTA usage and identify optimization opportunities. Tommy Hummel, Analytics Manager for Analytic & Strategic Services at Oracle Marketing Consulting, walks you through each step…
Messaging during Recessions: 3 Opportunities for Marketers
Posted on August 3, 2022
Regardless of whether the US is technically in a recession already or not, the majority of Americans have been under increasing economic pressure for a while already due to the highest inflation in 40 years, which is dramatically eroding their purchasing power. Despite the fact that many of the forces driving inflation are well outside of the Federal Reserve’s sphere of influence—the pandemic, the national housing shortage, Russia’s war against Ukraine, snarled global supply chains, etc.—the Fed is committed to additional steep rate hikes. Higher interest rates on mortgages, credit cards, and other loans will reduce economic activity, almost guaranteeing a recession by the end of next year.
In the meantime, marketers need to make the best of the current circumstances by tuning into consumers’ economic anxieties and concerns. Here are three strategies to consider…
The Last Word on July 2022
Posted on August 1, 2022
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
The Best Ways to Learn Email Marketing (rodriguezcommaj.com)
Accessibility Report July 2022 (Email Markup Consortium)
Email Flows for Every Industry (Mailmodo)
6 Best Practices for Using Animation in Email (Animately)
Elon Musk and the Twitter Bots: We Tested Account Creation with A Disposable Email (ZeroBounce)
Consumers Resent Poor Targeting by Brands: Study (MediaPost)
Taming Martech Stack Bloat Is Essential to Scaling Revenue (MarketingProfs)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
Can we stop calling it “cold email” and go back to calling it spam? “Cold email” is a euphemism created because “it’s not spam when I do it.”
— Mickey Chandler (@mickc_pro) July 1, 2022
The average person reads copywriting for less than 8 seconds before deciding to keep going or move on.
That means you absolutely need to catch attention with your headline/hook.
Here are 8 ways to do it:
🧵
— copyblogger (@copyblogger) July 15, 2022
I will stop coding emails with tables when people stop opening in Outlook desktop clients. #emailgeeks
— Carin Slater (@carinslater) July 20, 2022
Top 5 tips for getting your cold outreach email delivered!
1) Have
2) Permission
3) Before
4) You
5) Send!#deliverability #emailgeeks— Kent McGovern (@KentMcGovern) July 27, 2022
Noteworthy subject lines
Williams Sonoma, 7/1 – Cheers to the red, white & blue! Recipes from our Test Kitchen inside ➡️
Sears, 7/21 – Air Conditioners to the Rescue – Up to 20% Off
Bass Pro Shops, 7/21 – Time For Your Dollar To Work As Hard As You Do!
Bed Bath & Beyond, 7/24 – Budget helper: get 20% off every purchase + 5% back with Welcome Rewards+
Burlington, 7/15 – HANDBAGS: On-budget & on-trend
Everlane, 7/14 – Back In Stock—Our Bestselling Transit Bags
Neiman Marcus, 7/15 – It girl-approved bags
Gap Back to School, 7/27 – Everyone Belongs 🤝
Macy’s, 7/30 – Back-to-school extras that will be your BFFs all year
IKEA, 7/11 – Your dream home is now in mixed reality. Imagine that!
Uncommon Goods, 7/14 – What if your home were as fun/cool/inspiring/slightly weird as you are?
Banana Republic, 7/1 – For All Your Wedding Needs
Neiman Marcus, 7/1 – Festival bound?
Big Lots, 7/7 – Your road trip checklist 🚗
Williams Sonoma, 7/7 – Summer pantry checklist: our top 10 things
Crate & Barrel, 7/19 – Recipes & more for the perfect outdoor party ☀️
Nordstrom Rack, 7/6 – Summer of ’22 hits
Saks Fifth Avenue, 7/30 – Saks in Aspen: Get an inside look at our pop-up shop, VIP parties & best ensembles
Airbnb, 7/23 – Chad, the great outdoors awaits. Your move.
Bed Bath & Beyond, 7/17 – Celebrate 🍨 Ice Cream 🍦😋 Day with $30 off the Ninja CREAMi + more must-haves!
Wegmans, 7/21 – They’re Here! Summer’s Best White Pearl Nectarines
Lane Bryant, 7/15 – That no-bra feeling for $35 (or less).
Express, 7/24 – 👖👖👖 ALL JEANS $45 STARTS @ 6 P.M. 👖👖👖
Gap Email Exclusive, 7/7 – 50% off SALE & exclusive 20% bonus + 9-5ing. 5-9ing. And weekending.
Macy’s, 7/6 – Hey there: this special offer has self-care written all over it.
Banana Republic, 7/6 – @You: Up to 50% Off Sale Styles Has Landed
JCPenney, 7/12 – Heard there was a big sale starting today…
Eddie Bauer, 7/14 – Shop Sustainably. 🌱
MoMA Design Store, 7/21 – Ready, Set, Recycled!
MarketingProfs, 7/22 – ➡️ Special deal to convince your boss + a cute seal
West Elm, 7/7 – It’s here! Our new collab with Walker Noble Studios
Quiksilver, 7/6 – Head South of The Border With Quiksilver x Pacifico
Quiksilver, 7/14 – Are These Stranger Things Boardshorts Really Cursed?
Uncommon Goods, 7/13 – 📣 Introducing gift sets & subscriptions 📣
Omaha Steaks, 7/7 – Get $25 OFF today when you opt-in for text alerts!
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Loyalty Program KPIs: Measuring Health and Performance
Third Quarter 2022 Holiday Marketing Quarterly
Content Planning: Advice from Oracle’s Global Digital Marketing Agency
Don’t Write Off AMP for Email Yet
Get Inspiration from Our Holiday Subject Line Word Cloud
Third Quarter 2022 Holiday Marketing Quarterly
Posted on July 14, 2022
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 19-page Holiday Marketing Quarterly, we share a 24-point checklist that spans seven areas:
- Campaign Planning
- Workload Management
- Contingency Planning
- Managing Out of Stocks
- Audience Optimization
- Performance Monitoring Plans
- Solidifying Your MarTech Stack
For the full checklist…
>> Get the Holiday Marketing Quarterly for free with no form
Content Planning: Advice from Oracle’s Global Digital Marketing Agency
Posted on July 12, 2022
If it’s not in the plan, then it typically doesn’t happen. And if it does happen, then corners have been cut and sacrifices made. That’s a harsh reality, especially with today’s lean digital marketing teams. That’s why, when working with our Oracle Marketing Consulting clients, we take an expansive view of content planning.
How expansive? When doing content planning, we think you should be able to answer the following 6 questions:
- What are all of my sources of potential content?
- What are the narratives I’m trying to tell?
- Which campaigns involve complex content?
- What tests am I going to run?
- What changes should I make to my automated campaigns?
- How do I prepare for peak season campaigns?
Nick Cantu, Kelly Moran, Ana Jablonski, and I help you answer all of those questions in this blog post and companion on-demand webinar.
Don’t Write Off AMP for Email Yet
Posted on July 11, 2022
When it was officially launched in 2019 by Google, AMP for Email promised to bring standards-based interactivity and real-time content to inboxes, allowing brands to bring landing page and app-like functionality into their emails. Allowing product carousels, live forms, and checkout functionality, the potential payoffs for marketers and consumers were huge. However, reaping those benefits require big changes in the email marketing ecosystem.
Google aggressively promoted AMP for Email, looking to expand support to other mailbox providers like Yahoo and to convince email service providers (ESPs) to make the platform changes necessary for marketers to send AMP-powered emails, since they’re sent as a separate MIME part. At the same time, they worked to convince marketers that it was worth their time to learn how to code AMP emails and create them.
And then the winds shifted…
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
