Email Marketing RulesThe Last Word on December 2021
Posted on January 3, 2022
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
2022 Marketing Predictions for an Increasingly Digital World (MarketingProfs)
Defining the Four Types of Data and Knowing When to Use Them (Litmus)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
It’s been a minute since we’ve seen #CASL enforcement but if you’re a retailer you’ll want to read this one carefully… https://t.co/A6faNfqx5J
— Matthew Vernhout (@EmailKarma) December 8, 2021
Ok so I built a little something…
It’s a magic trick.
It’s built in CSS.
It will predict your favourite email app.https://t.co/1h2YBujDjdCheck it out #EmailGeeks
— Mark Robbins (@M_J_Robbins) December 8, 2021
New acronym? PSPUF. Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, Forums. AKA the dreaded Gmail tabs.
— Al Iverson’s Spam Resource (@spamresource) December 1, 2021
Baffling how many forms don’t support autofill. Such an easy way to increase your conversation rates.
— 𝔸𝕃𝔼𝕏 (@alexcwilliams) December 13, 2021
Someone in @WomenOfEmail shared this amazing email and I cannot stop laughing at this copywriting glory. Someone at @Shinesty has the best job ever. Enjoy #emailgeeks! 🎄 https://t.co/U5sAgcCrEl
— April Mullen (@aprildmullen) December 22, 2021
Noteworthy subject lines
Spotify, 12/14 – Who’s your #1 artist of the year?
Nintendo, 12/14 – It’s here, Chad—your Year in Review with Nintendo Switch!
Uncommon Goods, 12/4 – We have almost 4,000 gifts—so you can find just the right one.🎁
Target, 12/4 – Now available LEGO Collection x Target 🙌
Belk, 12/21 – You get a flannel! And YOU get a flannel! 🎁🎁 From $10 flannels for the fam
Kohl’s Green Monday, 12/13 – Here’s an extra 15% off to sweeten your shopping trip!
DICK’S | Weekend Savings Event, 12/4 – 3🎁Days🎁Left🎁Shop the Guaranteed-Under-The-Tree Event
West Elm, 12/6 – Up to 70% off: In-stock styles, going FAST!
Neiman Marcus, 12/6 – 50% off runway names (before they sell out!)
Eddie Bauer, 12/12 – These Gifts Are In Stock & Ready to Ship!
Williams Sonoma, 12/13 – The modern holiday table | Shop in-stock & ready-to-ship dinnerware
T.J.MAXX, 12/12 – Shipping gifts? Now’s your last chance!
DICK’S Sporting Goods, 12/14 – Get it in time: Order by tomorrow & choose standard shipping
Nordstrom, 12/16 – The most wanted UGG gifts | Last day for free delivery by Christmas
Express, 12/21 – ❗Order by 10 a.m. ET to get style steals under the 🎄 in time❗
Zales, 12/22 – ⏳ Time’s Running Out! Order NOW to Get it By Christmas!
Kohl’s Last Minute Gifts, 12/22 – Last-minute gifts + fast & free store pickup = check off that list!
DICK’S Sporting Goods, 12/21 – 💰 Score last-minute deals TODAY with curbside or in-store pickup
Bed Bath & Beyond, 12/22 – Save 20% on your ENTIRE purchase when you use FREE 1-hour pickup OR get FREE same day delivery!
Big Lots, 12/24 – LAST CHANCE for 15% OFF pickup orders! 😱 Shop by 5PM!
Starbucks, 12/21 – The perfect last-minute gift ☕ 💚
Macy’s, 12/24 – Down to the wire? E-Gift Cards to the rescue! ✉️
Victoria’s Secret, 12/24 – Christmas Is Tomorrow! Send an E-Gift Card
Banana Republic, 12/24 – Save Time, Get an E-Gift Card
Lowe’s Home Improvement, 12/29 – Easily redeem your gift cards with new tools.
Sears, 12/25 – 🎮 Now it’s time to give YOURSELF something…
Zales, 12/26 – Didn’t Get Everything You Wanted For Christmas?
Express, 12/4 – Your invite’s inside! ✉️ Express Live with Rachel Zoe
IKEA, 12/14 – Chad, be the first to watch the Host Masters finale 🥂🍾
Bed Bath & Beyond, 12/6 – Katie Lee Biegel’s expert tips & picks for fun holiday get-togethers 🥳
Express, 12/6 – Ready to put on your party pants? 🎉
Nordstrom, 12/6 – Beauty picks for holiday parties
Burlington, 12/14 – Inside: Brand-name New Year’s Eve outfits!
Big Lots, 12/26 – 🎉 New Year’s party? 🎉 Ring it in right!
Belk, 12/29 – There’s no party like a pajama party! 🎉 55% off women’s & kids’ sleepwear
Nordstrom, 12/24 – Get set for winter self-care
Walgreens, 12/29 – 💰 YES. PLEASE. A FSA is waiting at Walgreens! These deals mean it’s time to order
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Wishing Every #EmailGeek a Safe and Happy Holidays!
Dyspatch: The Email Marketing Trends That’ll Dominate 2022
8 Lessons Learned from Giving 100+ Webinars
13 Inclusive Design Changes to Increase Your Digital Marketing Engagement
Wishing Every #EmailGeek a Safe and Happy Holidays!
Posted on December 23, 2021
From my family to yours, wishing you a safe and Happy Holidays!
Dyspatch: The Email Marketing Trends That’ll Dominate 2022
Posted on December 17, 2021
It’s that time of year again: Prediction time. Since the future is always hazy, Dyspatch’s Liz Willits pulled together 12 experts to share their thoughts on the email marketing trends that will take off in 2022 and help marketers succeed. I was honored to be included, along with:
- Dave Gerhardt, Chief Brand Officer at Drift & Founder of DGMG
- Eddie Shleyner, Founder, VeryGoodCopy.com
- Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder of Orbit Media
- Matthew Smith, Design Goofball and Founder Really Good Emails
- Ryan Robinson, a blogger and podcaster
- Kaleigh Moore, eCommerce writer
- Anne Tomlin, Founder of Emails Y’all and Email Loot
- Dylan Moore, Director of Customer Success at Dyspatch
- Brian Minick, COO at ZeroBounce
- Rachael Pilcher, B2B SaaS copywriter
- Andrew and Pete, Founders of ATOMIC
Across everyone’s predictions, some interesting themes bubbled up out of the haze. For example, subscriber-centricity in terms of empathetic copy, personalization and segmentation, and strong usability was stressed. Also, ease of production was a theme, which included more use of modular email architecture and more use of plain-text email. There was also some consensus that brands would spend considerable effort adapting to Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, which was the focus of my prediction.
For a look at all the predictions…
8 Lessons Learned from Giving 100+ Webinars
Posted on December 14, 2021
With the pandemic shutting down live conferences for the better part of the past two years, B2B marketers have leaned hard on virtual events. And as the number of webinars has risen, so too have people’s expectations. That’s a challenge because there are so many ways big and small to mess them up.
Based on the 100-plus webinars I’ve done, plus the hundreds more I’ve attended, here are my tips for improving the webinar experience…
The Last Word on November 2021
Posted on December 3, 2021
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Holiday Apple Pie: MPP Is Having An Impact At A Bad Time (MediaPost)
Micro-Conversions: What They Are and Why They Matter (MarketingProfs)
Email Shopping Reimagined (Postmaster @ Yahoo & AOL)
When Cookies Turn To Toast: First-Party Data Will Be The New Jam (MediaPost)
What You Need to Know about the Consumer Data Protection Act (Trendline)
Brand Romance: Most Marketers Think They Have a Distinct Tone of Voice (MediaPost)
Mail Privacy Protection Seemingly Undermined by Apple Watch (MacRumors)
Four Techniques for ‘Story-Splitting’ Your Marketing [Infographic] (MarketingProfs)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
It’s helpful when cold emailers send you subject lines like “”Holy Amazeballs!”” so you can identify and flag as spam more quickly. 💌
— Lauren Meyer (@LaurenEmailGeek) November 9, 2021
Every time a bell rings, an email gets its wings. 🔔📨 #emailgeeks #BlackFridayDeals pic.twitter.com/qIiCfN8747
— April Mullen (@aprildmullen) November 22, 2021
Noteworthy subject lines
Uncommon Goods, 11/24 – 🎅 Order early: Santa’s supply chain’s iffy (three reindeer just quit 🦌)
REI, 11/7 – Our Top Gift Picks Are in Stock… For Now
Bed Bath & Beyond, 11/5 – 12 joyful ways to shop faster & easier this holiday
Walgreens, 11/20 – Curious about boosters? We did the legwork so you don’t have to
JCPenney, 11/1 – Early access: Black Friday Ad
The Home Depot, 11/1 – BLACK ⭐ FRIDAY ⭐ PRICES
Nordstrom, 11/4 – Black Friday Deal are on now!
Macy’s Black Friday, 11/11 – Shop early, save early. Black Friday Early Access is on now!
Zales, 11/12 – It’s Go Time. Black Friday Starts…NOW!
Crate & Barrel, 11/14 – Early Black Friday is ON. 🎁
Office Depot, 11/26 – 🔔 STORES ARE NOW OPEN FOR BLACK FRIDAY 🔔
Express Black Friday, 11/26 – 40-50% OFF EVERYTHING + 100s of Style Steals
Gap Black Friday, 11/26 – That *Black Friday* feeling! 40%–50% OFF + EXTRAS 🎁
Applebee’s Grill & Bar, 11/26 – Flash Sale: Buy a gift card, get 2 $10 bonus cards
IKEA, 11/18 – Black Friday is going green
JCPenney, 11/29 – It’s time! Cyber Days starts now
Office Depot Cyber Monday, 11/29 – 🖨️ 💻 🪑 📝 ☕ 🎁
DICK’S Sporting Goods, 11/1 – Our holiday gift guide is here! Plus, other great deal ➡️
Tractor Supply Company, 11/4 – Shop Our Holiday Gift Guide Today
Zales, 11/18 – 🎁 Perfectly Personalized Gifts
Petco, 11/4 – Get your dog in the holiday spirit 🎄 🐾
Michaels, 11/1 – You’ve uncovered *these* perfect and on-trend trees! 🎄
Bed Bath & Beyond, 11/18 – Introducing H for Happy, our festive new holiday collection
The Home Depot, 11/11 – Today & Every Day: Our Commitment to Veterans
Target, 11/11 — Hip, hip, hooray—it’s Disney+ Day 🥳
Crate & Barrel, 11/12 – Everything you need for an easy, beautiful Hanukkah 🕎
IKEA, 11/22 – Chad, welcome back to Host Masters!
Burlington, 11/5 – Stress-free saving for all your hosting needs
Olive Garden, 11/18 – The Answer to Your #HostingGoals
Big Lots, 11/22 – Get Turkey Day ready quick! Order In-Store Pickup!
Williams Sonoma, 11/7 – Sharp deals on knives for all your Thanksgiving prep
Williams Sonoma, 11/9 – Introducing the Williams Sonoma Recipes App
Bed Bath & Beyond, 11/9 – ICYMI: 5 reasons you’ll love our 5-star app ⭐
Gap Friends & Family, 11/9 – FLANNEL SZN
The Nuts.com Family, 11/5 – PB&J? How About AB&J?
Bass Pro Shops, 11/12 – Join us next weekend for the grandest tournament in fishing history!
Starbucks, 11/29 – Starbucks for Life is almost here!
IKEA, 11/5 – A new start for old IKEA furniture
Burlington, 11/22 – Donate a coat and get 10% off your purchase
Express, 11/4 – Introducing: Power of Mentorship 📺
VS PINK, 11/4 – Lana Candor for UNWRAPPED
Zales, 11/9 – Discover Serena’s Favorite Gifts
Uncommon Goods, 11/12 – 📣 This one’s not about shopping: a message from Dave, our founder
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
The Evolving Use of the Email Snooze
ZeroBounce: How to Make Your Holiday Emails Stand Out
5 Best Practices to Make Your Customer Experiences Truly Mobile-Friendly
Webbula: 2022 Email Marketing Predictions from the Email Experts
13 Inclusive Design Changes to Increase Your Digital Marketing Engagement
Posted on December 1, 2021
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA), and other laws forced companies to make their stores, marketing campaigns, and other aspects of their business more accessible to people with disabilities. However, many brands began to realize that huge portions of their customer base benefit from such accommodations.
The understanding that people with permanent, temporary, and situational challenges all benefit from design changes has fueled a transition from accessibility, where post-production accommodations are made based on the exception, to an embrace of inclusive design, a pre-planned intention to be more user-friendly toward everyone.
To engage a broader audience, consider incorporating these inclusive design best practices into your marketing campaign planning…
The Evolving Use of the Email Snooze
Posted on November 29, 2021
The email snooze began humbly as a way to reduce unsubscribes during brands’ highest volume times of the year. Positioned before “unsubscribe” on the unsubscribe page, the snooze option would let a subscriber pause their subscription for, say, 30 days or until the end of the selling season, such as the holiday season for retailers. Then, when the peak season was over and the risk of unsubscribes decreased, the option was removed.
However, the email snooze has evolved recently from a purely seasonal role-player to a year-round contributor to reduce opt-outs and increase engagement. In this post, Oracle Marketing Consulting’s Jeannine Pine talks about both of the ways that marketers are evolving their use of the snooze.
How to Define Active Email Audiences as Opens Depreciate + Priorities for a Mail Privacy Protection World On-Demand Webinar
Posted on November 22, 2021
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) will likely only be the first mailbox provider to flood marketers’ systems with fake opens, obscuring real ones. Welcome to the Age of Email Open Depreciation. Although far from perfect, opens were email marketers’ most frequent signal of engagement, generally clocking in at about eight times the number of clicks. As such, marketers relied on the metric to drive a range of activities. For example, you can use email opens to define active subscribers for targeting and inactive subscribers for suppression.
While email clicks can fill the void left by opens when it comes to send time optimization and subject line optimization, email audience selection requires a much broader approach. Going forward, the best way for you to define a subscriber as active or inactive will entail looking at both their activities as a subscriber and their activities as a customer across other channels.
To do that successfully will require brands to look at the right customer activities and use appropriate lookback windows for both existing subscribers and new ones. We provide an overview of these issues, including some helpful visuals, in this on-demand webinar and also discuss each of those issues in more detail in this post.
>> Read the entire post and watch the on-demand webinar on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
ZeroBounce: How to Make Your Holiday Emails Stand Out
Posted on November 16, 2021
The holiday season can be overwhelming for email marketers. Most B2C marketers create and send considerably more campaigns and they’re full of worries. In addition to fearing that their increased email volumes will trigger spam filters, they worry about whether their emails will stand out in crowded holiday inboxes.
To gather the best advice on creating standout holiday campaigns, ZeroBounce spoke with me and 11 other email experts. My advice is centered on simplicity.
“When someone is subscribed to your promotional emails during the holidays, then you’ve already won half the battle for their attention. You’re already on their mind and under consideration,” I say.
“Contrary to what you might think, the next step in getting their attention isn’t something outlandish. During the holiday season, when people are extra busy and getting more emails than at any other time of the year, simple messages win.”
To read all of my advice, plus the great recommendations from the other contributors…
5 Best Practices to Make Your Customer Experiences Truly Mobile-Friendly
Posted on November 12, 2021
Nearly every site is now responsive, and most emails are, too. But just because a brand is using responsive design doesn’t mean that they’re providing a mobile-friendly experience.
Responsive design functionality doesn’t take the place of mobile-friendly design principles. Brands need to use them both. Here are some easy-to-implement mobile-friendly best practices that companies should be following for their websites, emails, and other mobile content:
- Ensure that fonts are a legible size
- Make buttons and links finger-friendly
- Be selective about what elements are linked
- Use a single-column design
- Keep inclusive design principles in mind
For more on how to execute on each of those best practices…
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
