Email Marketing RulesI’ve Joined Litmus as Research Director
Posted on April 27, 2015
I’m excited to announce that I’ve joined Litmus as their Research Director. I’ll be heading up new research initiatives and creating content that inspires email marketers to be more creative, empowers them to make better decisions, and helps them understand new developments in the industry.
As a part of the stellar research and education team that already includes Justine Jordan, Jason Rodriguez, Lauren Smith, and Kevin Mandeville, I’ll be…
- Performing original research about email marketing tactics and trends—including looking at mobile email trends, cart abandonment emails, and email virality in the upcoming weeks
- Speaking at The Email Design Conference (TEDC) August 26–28 in Boston and September 28–29 in London (both of which will likely sell out well ahead of time)
- Sharing the latest email marketing trends and best practices on the Litmus Blog
- Collaborating with our ESP and agency partners on new research and great content
If you’re unfamiliar with Litmus and their email creation, preview, troubleshooting, and analytics tools, I humbly suggest you check them out. We’ve got exciting things planned, so stay tuned!
How Would An Email Tax Change Email Marketing?
Posted on April 21, 2015
On April Fools’ Day, Forbes ran a story about how Congress was considering a tax on email by amending the Internet Tax Freedom Act the next time it comes up for renewal. It was a great gag, and while I think there’s zero chance of any kind of email tax coming into being, it’s interesting to think about how the email marketing industry would change if some kind of tax were levied.
- How would a tax on email be implemented?
- How would an email tax affect deliverability?
- Would spam be eraticated by a tax on email?
- How would our management of inactive subscribers be affected by an email tax?
>> Read the entire column on MediaPost.com
Build Smarter Emails with These 5 Blueprints
Posted on April 10, 2015
Transforming your emails can be a daunting task. Sometimes it’s difficult to know where to start, and sometimes the gap between where you are and where you want to be just seems too large to leap.
In 5 Blueprints for Building Smarter Emails, we discuss how to make impactful, incremental improvements to several common types of emails:
- Welcome Emails
- Promotional Emails
- Event Registration Emails
- Transactional Emails
- Cart Abandonment Emails
In each case, we talk about high-return changes you can make, and illustrate how to turn these opportunities into action with an industry-specific example.
>> Download the free guide
I also spoke about this framework for incrementally improving emails at the Salesforce World Tour in Boston yesterday. Whereas the report looks at improving certain types of emails, my presentation focused on different design, personalization, and journey tactics that would be used to improve emails.
Together, the report and the presentation give you two different approaches to gradually making your emails smarter. Here’s the slide deck for that presentation:
See You at the Salesforce World Tour in Boston, Apr. 9
Posted on April 6, 2015
Tired of “one size fits all” messaging, subscribers are raising the bar on relevance. They want brands to prove they’re paying attention by delivering the right content at the right time. In short, they expect smarter emails.
The good news is that marketers have the tools they need to rise to this challenge. In my session, “Blueprints for Smarter Emails,” at the Salesforce World Tour in Boston on Apr. 9, I’ll be presenting a framework for gradually turning up the IQ of your emails in several manageable steps. We’ll look at improving:
- The Design of emails and landing pages, including defensive design and responsive design
- The Content & Context provided by emails, including seasonality and social proof
- The Personalization of email, including dynamic content and predictive intelligence
- The Journeys that are guided by your emails, including the timing, length, and content of these journeys
As we explore all the different point improvements that you can make, we’ll be looking at the latest research and inspiring real-world examples from our award-winning Email Swipe File to bring the opportunities into focus. When this session ends, you’ll have all the tools you need to create an email improvement plan for the next 6 months.
I hope to see you in Boston this Thursday.
>> Register to attend the Salesforce World Tour
April Fools’ Day Emails: Wise or Foolish?
Posted on April 2, 2015
Retailers are pros at leveraging seasonal hooks to promote products and sales. But April Fools’ Day is one of those holidays where retailers should tread carefully—or that they should just avoid altogether as most do.
Nowadays, if a retailer mentions April Fools’ Day it’s to half pun/half reassure subscribers that their email is “No Joke.” That’s because finding the right gag that does no harm and is on-brand for your company is tough.
This year, ThinkGeek showed us how to do an April Fools’ Day email right, and West Elm provided us with a cautionary tale. I spoke about this and more with Internet Retailer’s Matt Lindner.
>> Read the story on InternetRetailer.com
The Last Word on March 2015
Posted on April 1, 2015
A roundup of email marketing articles, posts, tweets, and examples you might have missed last month…
Must-read articles, posts & whitepapers
Why email marketing is still in style — and thriving (Venture Beat)
Symbolically Sinking – 10 Findings on Symbols in Subject Lines (Return Path)
Deliverability and engagement (Word to the Wise)
Context Changes Everything (StrongView)
Google Working on Project to Let You Receive and Pay Bills Directly Inside Gmail (Re/code)
Insightful & entertaining tweets
@mparkerbyrd: Email peeps … Seen anything like this before? https://t.co/06EZceAfd4
@jeremywaite: “Content is King. Relevance is King Kong” <– Comment of the day #genius
@ddayman: More of us need these award ribbons. “I Survived Another Meeting That Should Have Been An Email” http://t.co/VsBjoj49Wm #emailhumour
@ExperianMkt: There’s no magic # for how many segments to target – but the “unmagic” # is 1. The more relevant you can get, the better! #customerlifecycle
Great additions to the Swipe File pinboards
Lego uses innovative “email carousel” to bring interactivity to email >> View the pin
BabyGap email uses easy-to-follow blue and pink color coding >> View the pin
The DNC uses a triptych of animated gifs in this mobile-friendly email >> View the pin
West Elm’s 3-email cart abandonment series uses predictive intelligence >> View the pin
Noteworthy subject lines
J.Crew, 3/23 — Thaw out your closet! You’ve got 2 days to shop 30% off warmer-weather styles.
Hayneedle, 3/9 — Serve up Easter brunch outdoors!
Babies “R” Us, 3/11 — Need Ideas For Baby’s Easter Basket? Start Here!
Sephora, 3/25 — Confused by contouring? Start here
Clinique, 3/17 — Trending: Green & gold for eyes + 2 FREE minis.
J.Crew, 3/8 — #nowtrending on Instagram & Pinterest (plus, our sale ends today)
Under Armour, 3/17 — March Is Here. Gear Up Before Tip-Off
eBags, 3/8 — Daylight isn’t your only savings this weekend…
Gap, 3/8 — what goes with daylight savings? savings.
Victoria’s Secret, 3/8 — Lose an hour. Gain a Bonus Secret Reward.
Lands’ End, 3/6 — Gabi’s top 3 trends for the beach + 20% off swim
Lands’ End, 3/13 — See what real women are saying about our swimwear
Clinique, 3/6 — Know a bride? Show her this + FREE bag & minis.
Anthropologie, 3/11 — We’re putting our LBDs on pause.
Anthropologie, 3/18 — That party? These dresses.
Threadless, 3/5 — Tinder – not the only way to score.
American Apparel, 3/5 — Meet the Women Making It Happen
babyGap, 3/5 — new new new new new new
MoMA Store, 3/21 — Kick It Up Another Notch: Meet the Amish Scooters
The Container Store, 3/5 — Why is confetti flying?
P&G everyday, 3/30 — Smell that?
Subway, 3/24 — Your inbox is full (of flavor)
New posts on EmailMarketingRules.com
Is Email Marketing Cheap or Does It Have a High ROI?
On the Horizon: Subject Line Designers?
6 Retail Email Marketing Priorities for 2015
Email Carousels: Another Step toward Email’s Rich Content Future
Is Email Marketing Cheap or Does It Have a High ROI?
Posted on March 24, 2015
How you and—more importantly—your boss answer that question easily predicts the future success of your email marketing program.
In this Email Insider column for MediaPost, talk about:
- The behaviors that indicate an “email marketing is cheap” mentality vs. an “email marketing’s ROI is high” mentality
- The results of these two lines of thinking on marketplace adoption of marketing automation and mobile-friendly email design and trends in deliverability
- The disconnect between what marketing leaders say is important and those marketplace realities
- Why it’s time to acknowledge that email marketing is no longer cheap and that trying to compress email marketing costs is a losing long-term strategy
>> Read the full column on the MediaPost blog
On the Horizon: Subject Line Designers?
Posted on March 23, 2015
Given the lift in message engagement that’s seen in nearly every channel when you add an image to a message, it’s exciting that we now have limited use of images in subject lines. As I discuss in Salesforce’s 100 Inspiring Subject Lines, special characters like stars and hearts started appearing in the subject lines of marketers’ emails in early 2012, and then emojis began appearing in subject lines last year.
Currently around 2% of B2C emails include a special character or an emoji. Over the next two years or so I expect their usage to slowly rise—perhaps settling in around the 4% mark—as marketers become more comfortable with these new subject line elements and become assured that they don’t negatively affect deliverability.
While not a blank canvas, there are hundreds and hundreds of special characters and emojis that are appropriate for marketing use. That gives you a wide range of expression.
Let’s look at the three ways that visual elements can be used in subject lines and see them in action in some real-life examples…
>> Read the entire post on the Salesforce blog
6 Retail Email Marketing Priorities for 2015
Posted on March 20, 2015
Getting ready for the holiday season is almost a year-round effort—which is to say you’re preparing for November and December the other 10 months of the year.
To help you prep, I discuss 6 retail email marketing priorities in this slide deck, which includes supplemental links to research reports, articles, and real-world examples that allow you to take a deep-dive into the topics that are most important to you:
- Reassessing program goals
- Getting mobile-friendly
- Optimizing snippet text
- Increasing targeting and personalization
- Building out triggered emails
- Keeping inactivity in check.
Check out this slide deck and see why making progress on each of these priorities between now and October will get your email program in excellent shape for the upcoming holiday season.
Email Carousels: Another Step toward Email’s Rich Content Future
Posted on March 16, 2015
At the end of Email Marketing Rules, I say, “The emails of the future will be much more like sending subscribers a microsite than a static message. People will be able to watch videos, browse product assortments, and make purchases—all without leaving their inboxes.”
Following decent progress on video in email over the past few years, in recent months we’ve also made progress on browsable rich content thanks to the discovery of a WebKit hack that lets marketers create a fully functional tabbed box or content carousel, where subscribers can click the tabs or buttons in the content block in the email to flip through different images.
Emails from B&Q and Lego show off just how engaging these “email carousels” can be, especially since the hack is compatible with responsive design.
>> Read the full post on the Salesforce 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
