Email Marketing RulesEmail Deliverability Quarterly: ISP Performance Feeds, Validity Acquires 250ok, and More
Posted on April 14, 2020
Email deliverability is constantly changing, as inbox providers adjust their filtering algorithms, blacklists tweak their listing criteria, and consumers evolve their definition of spam. That’s why even the best email marketing programs suffer deliverability problems sometimes.
To help you avoid trouble, the Email Deliverability Services team at Oracle CX Marketing Consulting shares the latest news and tips for what to watch out for in our latest Email Deliverability Quarterly.
In this post, Daniel Deneweth, Clea Moore, and Heather Goff explain how the following news and events will impact marketers’ email deliverability:
- Verizon Launches Email Deliverability and Performance Feeds for AOL and Yahoo Mail
- Validity to Acquire 250ok
- Gmail Promoting Unsubscribes with Active Subscribers
- BIMI Standard Makes Advances
- Did GDPR Give Email Marketing a Massive Engagement Boost?
- A Sign of the CCPA Suits to Come
For the full discussion of each of these issues…
>> Read the full post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Systemic Shocks: Adjusting Your Email Messaging in Times of Disruption
Posted on April 8, 2020
The dot-com bubble. 9/11. The Great Recession of 2009. And now COVID-19. When extreme shocks such as these occur, business as usual ceases. These shocks cause prolonged changes in consumer behavior, forcing smart businesses and marketers to adjust, too.
While these adjustments typically start with crisis messaging, that’s just the beginning. Brands need to make changes to their future messaging, and that can be hard to do when many brands plan their messaging out months in advance, coordinating it across marketing channels and synching it up with advertising efforts. After all the time that’s been invested in that strategy, it can be emotionally hard to reevaluate that—or completely reboot it, which may be necessary in some cases.
Let’s discuss some of the ways in which marketers may need to change their messaging and strategy in the weeks and months following a major systemic shock. We’ll start with a look at automated campaigns and then talk about promotional broadcast and segmented campaigns.
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
The Last Word on March 2020
Posted on April 1, 2020
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
What We See With Email Rates During COVID-19 (MessageGears)
Benchmark Assessment: COVID-19 Email Activity and Engagement (SparkPost)
6 Takeaways from the UNSPAM 2020 Conference (Litmus)
Self-Serving Subscribers: Most Opt Out After Getting A Freebie, Study Finds (MediaPost)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
PSA: To all the delivery consultants spreading nonsense about using the words “Covid-19” in email subject line impacting inbox placement – Please stop – That is not what is impacting delivery of emails, negative reputation changes are. #EmailGeeks
— Matthew Vernhout (@EmailKarma) March 25, 2020
Since 2008 we’ve learned a lot of lessons about how to manage teams + stay productive in a virtual world. We rolled our advice into a free guide: 9 Ways to #WorkFromHome W/O Killing Your Company.
No cost, no email address needed. We hope it helps. https://t.co/8RRNqCiYR1 pic.twitter.com/AI3TUlh8b2— Jay Baer (@jaybaer) March 27, 2020
Interesting how #emailmarketing best practices for those with disabilities and impairments are also just good email marketing best practices. (Organize content, use contrasting colors, alt tags, etc) #unspam
— Adam Q. Holden-Bache (@AdamHoldenBache) March 13, 2020
Noteworthy subject lines
Dollar General, 3/25 – Dollar General is now hiring.
Lane Bryant, 3/25 – Status: Stir crazy but here for you (in your Lane)
UncommonGoods, 3/24 – 8+ ways to say “I miss you”
Williams Sonoma, 3/29 – 5 ingredients + a fry pan = dinner!
Crate & Barrel, 3/30 – Dining in = the new dining out | 20% OFF SALE
Express, 3/26 – Keep calm & boost your vibe with new spring shades
Eddie Bauer, 3/21 – Stay At Home Style 101
Dick’s Sporting Goods, 3/26 – Stay STRONG 💪 Up to 50% Off Cardio Equipment
Eddie Bauer, 3/30 – Upgrade Your Home Workouts
Dick’s Sporting Goods, 3/30 – Select GT Bikes $399.98 | Take a Fresh Air Break!
Big Lots, 3/30 – Kids still home? Keep them busy.
Michaels, 3/23 – Stock up on boredom busters for kids at our Lowest Prices of the Season!
UncommonGoods, 3/21 – Indoor fun for kids (that’s secretly educational, too)
Big Lots, 3/26 – Kid-Friendly Snacks & More!
Applebee’s, 3/21 – Family Style Meal options – available To Go!
Target, 3/24 – Entertainment for the whole fam ✨
UncommonGoods, 3/25 – Stuck inside? Play baseball in your living room.
Michaels, 3/26 – The best thing to do with your time at home? Make art! 🎨
AutoZone, 3/30 – Catch up on vehicle maintenance
Michael, 3/22 – Get in Some Spring Cleaning & Organizing While You’re Home (at Our Lowest Prices of the Season, Too!)
Camping World, 3/21 – Shop Deals on Outdoor Gear, Grills, Tents & More! #STAYCATION2020
Big Lots, 3/25 – Stay-at-home solutions!
West Elm, 3/28 – Let’s sort out your new home office.
Office Depot, 3/30 – PCs & Monitors to assist productivity
Express, 3/24 – Get your WFH essentials 40% OFF!
Nordstrom Rack, 3/30 – The Comfort at Home Shop starts now
Office Depot, 3/26 – Get comfy with today’s deal of the day.
ModCloth, 3/21 – Staying in? Stay cozy.
Nordstrom, 3/20 – A day at home done right
Neiman Marcus, 3/16 – Settle in & save 20% on your purchase!
Belk, 3/26 – Deal of the day: $100 e-gift card for $80
Dick’s Sporting Goods, 3/23 – Easy, Fast & FREE Curbside Contactless Pickup
Petco, 3/30 – Petco is now offering curbside pick-up
Best Buy Top Deals, 3/23 – New deals on great tech delivered curbside or to your doorstep.
Office Depot, 3/25 – Order Online. Free Curbside Pickup.
AutoZone, 3/25 – Curbside pickup now available
Applebee’s, 3/25 – Support your team, order takeout today!
Panera Bread, 3/26 – Chad, for you: free delivery through March.
Subway, 3/16 – Get all the benefits of ordering online
Camping World RV, 3/26 – Introducing Virtual Visits
VS Pink, 3/23 – 🐶 GOOD NEWS: It’s NATIONAL PUPPY DAY! 🐶
Zales, 3/23 – Your Happily Ever After Starts at The Bridal Sale
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Best Practices for Disaster and Crisis Messaging
Prepare for the Holiday Season by Experimenting & Testing Now
Holiday Marketing Quarterly: Second Quarter 2020 Checklist
Real-Time and Predictive Data Fuel the Best Customer Interactions
Knowing Your Customers So Well You Can Predict Their Needs
On-Demand Webinar: The Highest Impact Email Marketing Trends of 2020
Best Practices for Disaster and Crisis Messaging
Posted on March 31, 2020
Disaster planning is all about preparing for rare events, whether they’re epidemics, hurricanes, blizzards, wildfires, floods, earthquakes, or some other calamity. Crisis messaging should be a part of any disaster planning so you can communicate effectively with your customers and give them the essential information that they need.
Let’s talk about what that should look like in terms of messaging, subject line and preview text copy, tone, design, quality assurance, and segmentation…
>> Read the full post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Prepare for the Holiday Season by Experimenting & Testing Now
Posted on March 24, 2020
The holiday season is a dangerous time to try to innovate. More than any other time of the year, it’s the most expensive time to have a failure. On the other hand, the second and third quarters are a great time to experiment with different tactics and strategies in a much lower-stakes environment. This is why Experimentation & Testing and is one of our six recommendation areas in our second quarter Holiday Marketing Quarterly checklist.
For retailers and other B2C brands, selling seasons like Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Independence Day, back to school, and Labor Day offer opportunities to test out new messaging, designs, tactics, and strategies, as well as try out new capabilities and functionality. If they work, you can use them during the holiday season. If they don’t, well, you avoided them not working out in a much more costly way during November and December.
Here are several areas to consider exploring to set your company up for a more successful holiday season:
- Add more AI
- Make Your Customer Experience More Seamless
- Ramp Up Your A/B Testing
- Experiment with Competitive Differentiators
For more details on each of those recommendations to help you prepare for the holiday season…
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Holiday Marketing Quarterly: Second Quarter 2020 Checklist
Posted on March 23, 2020
Oracle’s Holiday Marketing Quarterly gives B2C brands a quarter-by-quarter checklist for how to achieve more during the critical holiday season with their email marketing and other digital marketing channels. Along with guidance on planning, strategy, and prioritization, you’ll get advice and tips from some of Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s more than 500 digital marketing experts.
Our second quarter guide contains a 19-point checklist and is focused on finishing your review of the 2019 holiday season, improving your subscriber acquisition and retention practices, improving performance visibility, and experimenting with new tactics and strategies. It covers six areas:
- Holiday Messaging Competitive Intelligence
- Subscriber Acquisition Source Optimization
- Unsubscribe Process Optimization
- Preference Center Refreshes
- Improved Analytics & Reporting
- Experimentation & Testing
For details on each of those areas…
>>Download the 13-page Q2 2020 Holiday Marketing Quarterly
Real-Time and Predictive Data Fuel the Best Customer Interactions
Posted on March 19, 2020
Building up your audience and then delivering the right messages to the various cross-sections of your audience is how you succeed in the modern marketing world. However, it can be confusing to determine how best to improve your efforts.
Oracle’s Marketing Maturity Model can help you determine where your organization is in developing its various capabilities and what should be done to enhance them. In Part 1 of this series, we talked about how to uplevel your capabilities to Stage 2, which is all about how to take a cross-channel approach. And then in Part 2 of this series, we discussed how to take your capabilities up to Stage 3.
In this post, which is the third of three posts in this series, Oracle CX Marketing Consulting’s Cristal Foster and Kim Roman discuss B2B audience building and segmentation capabilities and how to move from a data-driven approach to an intelligence-driven approach. Moving up to an intelligence-driven approach entails being able to act on individual-level data, not just segments. It requires that companies not only be able to look backward using historical and real-time data, but also look forward using predictive models, including scoring that’s powered by AI and machine learning. And it involves businesses being able to connect customer journeys across all customer experience touchpoints.
Let’s look at how your organization might level up its audience building and segmentation efforts…
>> Read the entire post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
Knowing Your Customers So Well You Can Predict Their Needs
Posted on March 13, 2020
In part 1 of this series on B2C personalization and automation, we looked at the importance of responsiveness and reacting to customer behaviors. In part 2, we looked at the rules for relationship marketing and how to further level up your communications so that your customers know you know (and love) them.
So you may be asking: What’s next? The next and final step is creating a full 360-degree customer profile that uses data from across your organization and then using it to super-charge your interactions with your customers and exceed their ever-growing expectations. This is the gold standard most organizations are striving to achieve. Pursuing this goal will take you to the cutting edge of relationship marketing. Those who can master it see big returns and have customers who love them and are oftentimes big advocates for their brand.
In this third and final post in this series, Oracle Consulting’s Jonathan McClure looks at some key things this level of personalization can do for you and how it uplevels 1:1 relationships to almost something out of science fiction…
>> Read the full post on Oracle’s Modern Marketing Blog
On-Demand Webinar: The Highest Impact Email Marketing Trends of 2020
Posted on March 10, 2020
To help you determine your email marketing priorities for 2020, we surveyed our more than 500 consultants about 26 tactics and technologies. They rated each one for its current adoption and its impact it will have in 2020. We then organized them into adoption-impact quadrants.
In this 49-minute on-demand webinar, we focus on those email marketing tactics and technologies that our consultants say will have the highest impact this year:
- AI-powered content recommendations
- Omnichannel orchestration
- Send time optimization
- Email segmentation
- Email personalization
- Legal compliance (CCPA, GDPR, etc.)
- Automated or triggered emails
- Responsive email design
Specifically, we do a deep dive on those first four trends in this webinar. Along the way, we share Oracle CX Marketing Consulting client stories and talk about how Oracle technology can help brands make the most of these email marketing trends in 2020. Let’s focus on the trends that are most worth your time and resources.
>> Watch the on-demand webinar
The Last Word on February 2020
Posted on March 5, 2020
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Did GDPR Give Email Marketing A Massive Engagement Boost? (MediaPost)
Special Characters, Emojis, Line Breaks: More Tricks for Optimizing Your Emails for Screen Readers (Litmus)
BIMI: 2019 in Review and a Look Ahead to 2020 (BIMI Group)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
Roses are red, Violets are blue, Scam emails are prevalent, Don’t click thru’!
— Spamhaus (@spamhaus) February 14, 2020
“Email is dead” is dead.
— Email on Acid (@EmailonAcid) February 18, 2020
Respect to anyone who does HTML email encoding all day. This. Shit. Is. Hard.
— Daniel Burka (@dburka) February 11, 2020
“Hello Loren,
Isabelle let me know that you and your husband might be interested in hosting a birthday celebration here at …”
Whether sending a personal or commercial email message, don’t guess at someone’s gender based on their name … trust me, I know what I speak of
— Loren McDonald (@LorenMcDonald) February 28, 2020
Noteworthy subject lines
Walmart, 2/15 – 🎩 PRESIDENTS’ DAY 🎩 save on TVs, décor, & more
Michaels, 2/12 – Attention, Please 💝 Only 2 Days Left ’Til Valentine’s Day!
T.J.MAXX, 2/7 – In store: Love a lot. Spend a little.
MoMA Design Store, 2/4 – Say “Be Mine” with Good Design
Macy’s, 2/12 – ❤️ Got a V-Day gift yet? Shop these deals before it’s too late!
Williams Sonoma, 2/26 – Everything Easter: bakeware, baskets, table settings
Hobby Lobby, 2/15 – Online Only – 66% Off All Remaining Christmas Trees!
Bass Pro Shops, 2/7 – Get your fishing season prep underway and save!
Express, 2/26 – Your one-step solution to spring outfitting
Kohl’s, 2/19 – Stay one step ahead with new shoes 👡👟
REI, 2/25 – As Committed to Running as You
Staples, 2/25 – All eyes on YOU. 25% off signs, posters and banners
Williams Sonoma, 2/12 – Find your perfect shade of Le Creuset 🌈
Banana Republic, 2/26 – Introducing Work Where?
Lane Bryant, 2/4 – Join Lane Rewards to start earning today!
Saks Fifth Avenue, 2/26 – The Milan Fashion Week Memo: from Bottega Veneta’s show to leather everywhere on the streets
Quiksilver, 2/7 – Meet Phoebe Taylor, a musician from Australia
RV Navigator, 2/24 – Perfectly Rated Parks for 2020
Best Buy Top Deals, 2/18 – Another email full of spectacular deals! Get clicking + start saving… ✉️
PINK Sport Sale, 2/19 – AS SEEN ON YOU: Sport! (40% OFF!)
VS PINK, 2/4 – PINK GRL PWR PROJECT: It’s BACK! Apply now!
XOXO Victoria’s Secret, 2/7 – Shop V-Day gifts by price 💝
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Email Marketing Trends for 2020: Proven Essentials
Centralizing Data and Speaking as One Company
Creating a Single Brand Experience to Grow Relationships
Email Marketing Trends for 2020: Competitive Differentiators
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
