Email Marketing RulesThe Often Missing Element in Email Marketing Success Metrics: Time
Email marketing success metrics are incredibly tricky, in part because it’s very easy to fall into a mindset of evaluating campaign success instead of program or customer success. While individual campaigns are important—some being critical—the collective impact of our campaigns on the engagement of our subscribers is even more important. It’s an…
2015 Top 10 Email Marketing Stats
2015 marked a significant turn in the perception of email marketing in the media and in C-suites. After years of “Email Is Dead” headlines, this year brought renewed interest and headlines like The Triumphant Return of the Email Newsletter and Shop, Play Games, And Check Twitter—From Your Inbox. Ultimately, these predictions of…
5 Reasons External Email Benchmarks Are Less Useful Than You Think
Our competitive nature drives us to want to know how other email marketers are performing. But aggregated, averaged benchmark data can provide false comfort and false alarms. I’m not saying benchmarks are completely unuseful, just that they’re usually only helpful in a very general way for the following reasons: Audience response is…
Tactics Used by the Top 1% of Viral Emails
“One of the key drivers of sharing is social capital. Sharing something of interest to our network is a way of showing that we’re in the know. It is a means to build our professional, cultural or social standing among our circles,” said Alfred Hermida, Associate Professor at the Graduate School of…
5 Secrets to Getting Subscribers to Forward Your Emails
Social sharing gets a lot of attention—in large part, because it’s relatively easy to measure—but the all but invisible email forward can be just as powerful for brands. Whereas social sharing is public, diffuse, and powerful at driving top-of-the-funnel awareness, email forwards are private, targeted, and excel at driving bottom-of-the-funnel action. To…
How Emails Are Evolving into Mailable Microsites
“The emails of the future will be much more like sending subscribers a microsite than a static message,” I say at the end of my book, Email Marketing Rules. Watching videos, browsing product assortments, and even making product purchases will also be possible without leaving the inbox. When the book was published…
Is Email Marketing Cheap or Does It Have a High ROI?
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…
6 Retail Email Marketing Priorities for 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…
Disconnects on Metrics: Health vs. Optimization vs. Success Metrics
Marketers have become very focused on measuring the effects of their work—which is both good and bad. On the one hand, quantifying things can prove that certain strategies and tactics are effective and worth additional investment. On the other hand, we don’t always do a very good job at understanding the numbers…
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
Features
