Email Marketing RulesThe Under-Staffing of Email Marketing Teams: 4 Faulty Justifications
Posted on June 7, 2018
Insufficient staffing and resourcing are major, persistent problems in the email marketing industry. Email marketers told Litmus that insufficient staffing was No. 2 on their list of the biggest email marketing challenges of 2018. They also told us that adding new staff and expanding their use of agencies and freelancers was at the bottom of their list of email marketing priorities for 2018.
The failure to address what is clearly a common problem may be because of several misconceptions and blocking issues. Here are some common ones:
Everyone is under-resourced, so this isn’t actually a problem. It’s just whining.
Lean programs are successful programs. It forces teams to get creative.
We’ve had trouble attracting full-time employees to work on our email team. We’ll just have to make do with the staff we have.
We don’t have time to do the research required to determine the best way to resource our email marketing team.
We tackle each of those, sharing research on why those shouldn’t be holding your program back.
>> Read the full post on the Litmus blog
The Last Word on May 2018
Posted on June 6, 2018
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
After GDPR, here come the Unintended Consequences (MarTech Today)
Browse abandonment email test results (ZettaSphere)
Privacy Commissioner issues new guidance to help address consent challenges in the digital age (Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada)
The New Rules of Email Subscriber Acquisition (Only Influencers)
Should big tech companies like Facebook be broken up? (Recode)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
I love receiving privacy policy updates for brands I have no past relationships with, sent to email addresses given to a different company. If there ever was a clue you’re doing it wrong this is it. #GDPRcompliance #CASL
— Matthew Vernhout (@EmailKarma) May 24, 2018
— Thomas Fuchs 🦕 (@thomasfuchs) May 9, 2018
My mum is leaving it awfully close to the GDPR deadline to ask if I want to opt in to receive her emails, calls and texts.
— Sharon O’Dea (@sharonodea) May 15, 2018
Noteworthy subject lines
GoDaddy, 5/3 — It’s World Password Day. Fire up a fresh one.
Ann Taylor, 5/1 – Mother’s Day Is May 13th
Vera Bradley, 5/2 – See what the stork brought: Mother’s Day gifts for the new mom!
Saks Fifth Avenue, 5/1 – The gift of fab: perfect presents for her
UncommonGoods, 5/7 – 25 Ways to Thank Mom
Hayneedle, 5/13 – Mothers, we appreciate you.
ModCloth, 5/4 – The feline awakens
Lego Shop, 5/4 – May the 4th starts… NOW!
Applebee’s, 5/5 – Two Neighborhood Drinks for Cinco!
HP, 5/13 – It’s celebration season!
Godiva Chocolatier, 5/18 – Diplomas don’t happen without them
Chili’s, 5/27 – Celebrate National Burger Day with the Burger Experts.
Home Depot, 5/28 – Honoring the Fallen. Serving Their Families.
American Red Cross, 5/31 – Help us honor America’s heroes
FansEdge, 5/31 — $TBT Fathers Day Retro Gear. Gift Him Memories.
Barneys New York, 5/2 – Here Comes the Sun (And New Arrivals)
Anthropologie, 5/17 – Oh how we’ve missed you, shorts.
Banana Republic, 5/20 – Tailored athleisure? Game changer.
Victoria’s Secret, 5/31 – Because Summer layers are totally a thing.
Target, 5/5 – Patio: Open & score a promo code for EXTRA savings on SALE stuff.
Target, 5/12 – Want a Pinterest-worthy patio for less? Up to 25% off + 10% off
Pier 1 Imports, 5/31 – Drinks by the pool or dinner on the patio?
Miracle-Gro, 5/31 – Flea, Tick & Mosquito-Related Illnesses Rising, CDC Reports
Kate Spade, 5/12 – ready for the beach?
Saks Fifth Avenue, 5/14 – Summer weddings decoded
Hayneedle, 5/16 – Room to grow: Try vertical gardening!
Epicurious, 5/5 – The best canned tuna is…
Hayneedle, 5/18 – Giveaway + This Old House’s Charleston Home Renovation.
Jetsetter, 5/20 – 11 Places to See Before It’s Too Late
ModCloth, 5/14 – Your recently restocked faves come in every shade.
Michaels Weddings, 5/20 – Introducing michaelsweddings.com: Your New DIY Wedding Headquarters
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Email List Validation: 11 Expert Predictions About AI
Email List Validation: 9 Expert Marketers Share Their Thoughts on the GDPR
Coming 1-Year Anniversary of Email Marketing Rules’ 3rd Edition
Email List Validation: 11 Expert Predictions About AI
Posted on May 24, 2018
Artificial intelligence will undeniably have a significant effect on marketing in the years ahead. To better understand those effects, Email List Validation reached out to 11 experts, including me.
Many of my views have been shaped by the 20 email marketing experts who contributed to Litmus’ Email Marketing in 2020 report, which addressed all the ways in which email marketing technology and processes will change in the years ahead.
Cumulatively, we came up with eight predictions for how AI will impact marketing:
- AI Will Make Data Analysis Much Easier
- AI Will Eliminate Menial Marketing Tasks
- AI Won’t Replace Interacting With Customers
- AI Will Thoroughly Disrupt Marketing
- AI Will Replace Entry-Level Marketing Tasks
- AI Will Transform Email Copywriting and Personalization
- AI Will Overhaul E-commerce Recommendation Engines, But It Won’t Eliminate Email Surveys
- AI Will Change the Economics of 1:1 Marketing
>> Read all about the predictions on Email List Validation’s blog
A Snapshot of an Email Team
Posted on May 22, 2018
Email marketing is a team sport. And like a sports team, it’s not just the people who are on the field that count. An email team generally consists of three groups:
- Internal team members, which consist of the full- and part-time employees on a brand’s email marketing team.
- External email team members, which consist of freelancers and consultants, plus agencies and the services arms of email service providers.
- Business stakeholders, which consist of all of the people involved in strategic goal-setting and the review and approval of emails across all the departments of your organization.
On average, brands have nearly eight full- or part-time employees working on email marketing. More than 26% use at least one freelancer, and nearly 34% of brands use an agency. Plus, marketers generally work with 2.4 other departments to get their emails reviewed and approved.
Even if you’re a solo email practitioner, there’s a chance you work with freelancers or an agency. And even if that’s not the case, unless you’re a solopreneur, you have stakeholders that establish key performance indicators and review and approve the emails you create.
Based on Litmus’ 2018 State of Email Survey of nearly 3,000 marketing professionals worldwide, this presentation looks at each of those three email team components, as well as how email team sizes may change during 2018. See how your own email marketing team compares by…
>> View the presentation on the Litmus Blog
Email List Validation: 9 Expert Marketers Share Their Thoughts on the GDPR
Posted on May 15, 2018
The General Data Protection Regulation goes into effect on May 25. To explore the issues around GDPR, Email List Validation reached out to nine experts, including me. Together, we address:
- The ambiguities in the law
- The opportunity it presents, which is an issue I discussed with Emarsys recently
- The need to be more selective in what data we ask for and store
- How European senders won’t be massively impacted by GDPR, unlike American brands
- How GDPR is a boon for consumers, who have not been served well by self-regulation by corporations
- The effect on database sizes and on personalization
- And more…
>> Read the full post on Email List Validation’s blog
Coming 1-Year Anniversary of Email Marketing Rules’ 3rd Edition
Posted on May 10, 2018
The 3rd Edition of “Email Marketing Rules” will be celebrating its 1-year anniversary in a few weeks. I’d like to thank everyone who has purchased it, and most especially those who have reviewed it on Amazon.
Reviews are critical for all authors, but especially for independent authors like myself. If you’ve read “Email Marketing Rules” and haven’t reviewed it yet, I would be incredibly appreciative if you could take a few minutes to do so. Whether you loved it or merely liked it, a short review would really help.
>> Review or buy “Email Marketing Rules” on Amazon
To help pay it forward, I’ve reviewed several books on Amazon recently, including…
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition
- Effective Data Visualization: The Right Chart for the Right Data
- Improving Survey Questions: Design and Evaluation
- The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, 3rd Edition
- The Storytelling Edge: How to Transform Your Business, Stop Screaming into the Void, and Make People Love You
Thanks again for your support!
The Last Word on April 2018
Posted on May 4, 2018
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, and tweets you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & reports
Google to launch new Gmail design in the coming weeks (The Verge)
Gmail Testing Subject Line Images with Promotion Cards (FreshInbox)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
When you try to hard to follow already bad advice on subject lines. This is not how you do it guys @VinceroWatches , this is just how you get unsubscribes. #EmailMarketing #emailgeeks #copywriting pic.twitter.com/oZXzhlpN9y
— Zoran Orak (@ZoranOrak) April 9, 2018
Me, at #LitmusLive in Boston in a @litmusapp t-shirt, September 2018 (colourized) #emailgeeks pic.twitter.com/W30emk0cUI
— ryan 😍s you! (YES, YOU) (@kokuou) April 20, 2018
Noteworthy subject lines
Saks Fifth Avenue, 4/18 – Gifts for everyone and their mother…
Vera Bradley, 4/28 – Inside: lightweight gifts that will brighten Mom’s summer travels.
PersonalizationMall.com, 4/5 – Mother’s Day Preview Sale – Save Up to 30%
FansEdge, 4/1 – Free Shipping = HOME RUN To Start Your Season!
Anthropologie, 4/1 – Bring flowers to your Sunday Celebration
Miracle-Gro, 4/2 – Expert advice for your veggie garden plan
Lowe’s, 4/7 – Get to Mowing, Trimming and Grilling. It’s Outdoors Season
Jetsetter, 4/11 – Countdown to Summer: 9 Incredible Trips to Book Now
Saks Fifth Avenue, 4/28 – Postcard-worthy prints for your vacation
Miracle-Gro, 4/23 – Got a shady plan?
Sony Electronics, 4/12 – Tips on Shooting Sunsets, Perfecting Puppy Portraits, and More
Hayneedle, 4/12 – Balancing act: 5 basics of feng shui …
Barneys New York, 4/18 – Find Your Perfect Face Mask
Brooks Brothers, 4/7 – We’re 200! (But we don’t feel like it.) 18.18% off through tomorrow to celebrate
ToysRUs, 4/5 – All Our Stores Are Closing…Everything Must Go, Go, GO!
Apple, 4/3 – Introducing the new iPad.
NFLshop, 4/12 – The Official 2018 Draft Headwear Collection Is Here
Gap, 4/21 – 2 convenient subscription boxes, 1 happy little one
Chili’s, 4/1 – Chad, what are you waiting for? Join for FREE chips & salsa every visit!
Moosejaw.com, 4/5 – Win an All-Inclusive Trip to Germany from Deuter.
REI, 4/12 – Let’s Raise the Bar on Sustainable Gear
RH, 4/1 – Experience the Salvaged Wood Collection. 100-Year-Old timbers, Reimagined.
Pier 1 Imports, 4/4 – That pillow, this rug and that painting. Done.
West Elm, 4/28 – Window shopping? Find the perfect curtains!
Kate Spade, 4/18 – yes, this bag fits that
UncommonGoods, 4/30 – No Pants, No Problem
Hasbro, 4/2 – ATTN Star Wars fans! It’s now or never for the first HasLab campaign
Victoria’s Secret, 4/21 – FREE $$$ inside (AKA $aturday $core!)
ThinkGeeks, 4/12 – How do you organize a space party? You planet
American Red Cross, 4/6 – Jen’s confession
UncommonGoods, 4/11 – When Mom & Dad Are Your Co-Workers
Banana Republic, 4/12 – The new way to wear a sweater
ModCloth, 4/14 – Embroidery, bikes, and lots of likes.
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Report: 2018 State of Email Workflows
Webinar Recording and Q&A: The State of Email in 2018
The Best of the 2017 State of Email Survey Research Series
Report: 2018 State of Email Workflows
Posted on April 25, 2018
Creating a high-performing email takes time and the right resources. Most brands spend weeks planning and executing on each email they produce, and use many different tools along the way. Your workflow is an expression of the investment you make in every email—and is itself a predictor of email program success.
Based on our State of Email Survey of nearly 3,000 marketers, our third annual State of Email Workflows report takes a detailed look at every stage of email creation—from planning and building to quality assurance and sending.
Some of the key findings from the State of Email Workflows include:
- More brands are using content and project management software to plan their email content rather than relying solely on documents, spreadsheets, and calendars from the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Apple.
- Brands spend more time on email reviews and approvals than they do on copywriting, design, coding, or any other component of email production.
- Modular email design approaches are on the rise.
- Use of partials, taskrunners, and preprocessors continues to increase.
- Fewer brands are sending emails the same day they’re approved.
- Only half of brands sent an apology email for an email marketing mistake in the past 12 months.
- The email service provider industry continues to consolidate.
The 47-page report analyzes and explores each of these findings and much more, with over 35 charts providing data-based evidence of current practices and trends in email workflows.
>> Download the free report
Benchmark Email’s Podcast: When it Comes to Email Marketing Rules, Chad S. White Wrote the Book…Literally
Posted on April 23, 2018
I recently joined Andy and Daniel for Benchmark Email’s Heart of Business Podcast. During the 53-minute podcast, we talked about…
- How I got into the industry from my previous life as a journalist at Conde Nast and Dow Jones
- How email marketing has changed over the years
- How email marketing is a critical part of an omnichannel strategy going forward
- Why email marketing doesn’t fit into the traditional paid-owned-earned media model
- How email marketing is unkillable
- Why email overload is a bit of a myth
- Why I wrote “Email Marketing Rules”
- And much more
>> Listen to the podcast on Benchmark Email’s blog
Webinar Recording and Q&A: The State of Email in 2018
Posted on April 18, 2018
The email landscape is constantly changing, making it harder than ever to create high-performing email programs. New email clients, devices, unsubscribe functionality, and privacy laws will have an impact on your 2018 marketing programs.
In this webinar, the Litmus marketing team talks about what you need to succeed in a volatile industry, including our five key insights from the 2018 State of Email Report.
See how your plans stack up against some of the biggest challenges facing marketing teams and hear about the strategies and resources you need to tackle them head-on. Along the way, we share a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re approaching those challenges here at Litmus.
>> Watch the recording, download the slides, and read the Q&A on the Litmus blog
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
