Chad S. White of the Oracle Digital Experience Agency is back. The email marketing side of the Yoogle update along with whats new in his book!

And also, as you mentioned, a little bit of a rebrand here. No more Oracle Marketing Consulting. We are now Oracle Digital Experience Agency. So exciting times here, really a name change that reflects a growing number of changes over a period of the last few years, you know, we do much more than just marketing, we do much more than just email, although certainly people really know us for that. 

But we're doing a lot of exciting things and employee communications and more on the, like the sales process side of things and. So it's really great. We're broadening our horizons and certainly playing in many more channels and helping our, our clients orchestrate all of those channels together, which is absolutely where everything is headed. 

I know everyone here loves email marketing. I obviously love email marketing, but you know, our future is tied very closely to all of these other channels and how they can all work together. You know, it's never been email versus other channels. It's always been email. Plus and with other channels. So that's a little bit of what's behind our name change.

You know, product, if you will, you know, that's in an internal company and how we perceive that it is really just taking a lot of other pieces that have been there and really tying them all together because, you know, each one of those has grown, you know, sometimes independently, sometimes together, but yeah, like giving that cohesiveness is awesome. 

Like, and man, that's, you know, props to you guys for taking the step and even doing the name change to coincide with that and really, you know, focus in and make sure that. People out there know, right? The consumers of this know and understand that, Hey, you can't think of it as just like silo channels anymore. 

It's all one thing.

You know, unified data pools, unified customer records, you know, like that's the future that we're all going to be living in. And like, you know, we're all working on blazing that trail towards that future. Right now.

All there is to know about email or at least a good chunk of it, right? Like this is going to be your foot in the door. And I know in particular, one of the things that we had talked about discussing at this point is really you know, the new edition, right, you know, why the new edition, when the new edition, who the new edition we'll ask all the questions about the new edition. 

I think first of all, is the you know, kind of like the. I guess we'll get into that why, and I think the first topic that we have, like on our list is the most important because it has been a little while in the world of email. It's a long while, but I think in, you know, when it comes to maybe even a small child, it's a long while, but you know, for us who've been in this for quite a while, this doesn't seem like that much time. 

But really, when you consider all the changes, all the differences, everything that's constantly evolving, this is a long time for email. So, we'll kind of get into that. Like, yeah, i'll let you guys take it away.

For context, the first edition, and it's also the 10 year anniversary of the first edition of, Email Marketing Rules so that came out in 2013. And honestly, like, by the time that was published, I was already thinking about like, Oh, what could I have said that I didn't include? And so it was only like, 18 months before the second edition came out. 

And that was mostly just me realizing like, Oh, geez, I could have said a lot more, there's a lot more stuff I could have included to help people out. And then it was two and a half years before the third edition came out. And, you know, part of that was some changes, but a lot of that was also, you know, me pulling together more stuff. 

Now the fourth edition is really different because it's also obviously me learning more. And, you know, I talk about, you know, brand new things like competitive intelligence and RFP processes and content planning and just like talking about new areas that weren't included in any of the other editions. 

But, Also, it was six and a half years, and during which a ton of things happened. I mean, yeah, you're not kidding, JT. Like, there was a lot of change that happened during that time. MPP came into existence. Dark mode, AMP for email, schema and email annotations, CDPs, and obviously generative AI. None of those things existed when I wrote the third edition, and there are a bunch of other smaller things that also didn't exist. 

But those are certainly some of the big ones. A lot of like, I think really significant industry changes and, you know, MPP definitely, I think is like one of the biggest ones and I, honestly, I started to kind of go through the third edition and to start to, you know, what did I write, you know, and where do I need to make tweaks? 

Because when I do a new edition, I go and I reread everything. Everything gets like rewritten and updated. Everything gets touched every single word. And and so I had started that process and then Apple came out with its announcement and I was like, no, what does this mean? And I literally, I stopped reviewing. I stopped writing for like six months. Because I needed to get my head wrapped around like how, or all the ripple effects of the thing. I mean, everybody here knows MPP was like a huge deal that touched lots of parts about how everything worked. And so yeah, it took like a six month break before I felt confident again. 

That, you know, I could continue to make updates you know, feel good about what I was recommending. Yeah. So, yeah, it was really a little bit of a delayed process. It really was a struggle. The rewriting took like a couple of years because of that but yeah, there's tons of new content in there. There's 34 new rules. 

There's 15 new chapters. There's like 20 new charts. And one of the things that I'm probably the most excited about is volume one, which has all the rules in it. It also has over 200 exercises that are all brand new. So really allowing people to kind of put these rules to work in their own email marketing programs, you know, before like. 

It was sort of left up to you to kind of figure out. And now there's all these exercises that tell you exactly how you can apply these rules and what you need to check and what you might consider testing and so on and so forth. So really, really actionable.

Oh, go ahead.

With the Apple changes, you got MPP coming on. And it's one of those things where it's not just that rule changed something or that there was a pivot. It's like the whole industry, I think changed in the way that we perceive certain things. I mean, you think six and a half years back, you know, opens are king, you know, there are our big metric. 

And now like between that and between a lot of the other little changes that have happened, it just changed the perception of everything. So it's like, you know, I appreciate the update because we get that kind of stuff and we get that, mentality shift, you know, for the interest if you will, a mentality shift you know, mentality for the industry experts you know, change in that we have adopted with those changes. So like that is one of those big things, but yeah, like the whole way that the book is structured, I appreciate a lot. Like, can you talk a little bit more about like the different volumes and the differences between that and like, maybe even how somebody should utilize the two different volumes.

Volume 1 is really intended For email marketers, email designers, you know, anybody who's in the trenches, the part of the email marketing program, and it's touching everything, you know, so designers, copywriters, you know, and email marketing managers. Volume one is for you, you know, it really drills down, allows you to kind of like dissect and pull apart, you know, all the different ways, all the different cogs of how the email marketing machine works, and really refine each of those bits in a really kind of detailed way. 

Now, volume two is really much more for like a VP of marketing or someone who aspires to be a VP of marketing. It really lays out sort of the big picture of how all these things work. You know, how does deliverability work in general? And then volume one has all the, you know, the nitty gritty things that go into, you know, making sure that your deliverability is great. 

But yeah. I mean, I hear all the time about how email marketers are forced to do things that are very ill considered by bosses that don't understand how things work, that don't understand email production timelines, that don't understand deliverability, you know, that don't understand like content, they just say like, oh, send another email, like, and so volume two is for them. 

It's that bigger picture of how things work without getting into the nitty gritty, the stuff that email marketers really need to understand, right? You know, that CMO, that VP of marketing, you know, Volume 2 is going to give them everything they need to know so that they can have a better relationship, a much more successful relationship with the email marketing channel and with their channel operators. 

So, you know, I think a lot of people based on what I've been seeing in the sales numbers, a lot of people are buying both, and that's great but some people are just buying volume one. And some people are just buying volume two and, and that's great. So, you know there's a very clear kind of division of the two, but like 80 percent of people are buying both.

Right. And volume two is like this is this guide, you know, it's this map of understanding like how all the roads connect. Right. So it gives you that nice big picture. Yeah. The volume one is like for the doers. I mean, volume two has great doer stuff as well, but like, volume one is all about the nuts and bolts.

And again, people who aspire to move up the chain. And I think one of the other things I hear is that for you know, email marketers, when they read volume two, they're like, Oh, thank goodness. Like this gets me talking points that I can use with my boss, you know, with my VP of marketing helps me to like more easily explain to them, you know, what's going on or why the thing they're suggesting is not a good idea. 

It's that volume two is that kind of like that communication chain up and down from email marketers up to executives.

But everybody's also a part of my email marketing journey by reading these books, because you can see like my thinking evolving and you can see how, you know, there's this broadening of what's covered and how, you know, email is. You know, there's much more stuff about, you know, Omni channel in the fourth edition and like all that. 

So you can see all the changes by reading, you know, the, the different editions, not that you should, I mean, but if you have like Nick, like, you'll see that progression.

And I know that the new versions have, you know, added all of these different things that are constantly changing in this email space. And omni channel space.

So we ran the gamut on that side and doing it from the perspective of the sending, putting those two pieces together. You know, your book, like quite honestly helped just connect those dots of like, Hey, this is what, you know, you think of as a sender and this is what you think of when, when, you know, having that background and knowing what to do from the inbox perspective side of things, it was a really good to do that with. 

And, and I mean, yeah, like the new edition I think is going to help even more so with that, like to do those checklists to do those. Those, you know, the workbook part of it and then it really does help expand and kind of get into the most important part of it, which is the changes. 

And I love to say this over and over again, but my favorite conversations have always been with with people that say, Hey, I've been in the email game for 10 years now and I'm doing nothing different than I was doing 10 years ago. So why is my stuff failing ? And it's like, because I'm not doing anything different. You've made no changes.

I feel like, you know, fifth edition is on the horizon with the stuff that's even evolving today. And I know we kind of wanted to touch on that just a little bit because we know there's one important change I think for the marketing world. And I think this is kind of, you know, within the email realm, but I think just adjacent to it when we come to the link tracking protection that Apple is doing now. 

And I know, Chad, you're kind of in it and with everything you guys are doing there on the Oracle side. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and kind of thoughts on it?

I feel like there's been lots of changes. I mean thank goodness I didn't put out the fourth edition and then MPP came out. That would have been, like, I would have been right back to the drawing board really fast. So thank goodness that didn't happen. But yeah, there's been I think numerous changes, even since March, when I released the fourth edition. 

Yes, certainly Apple's link tracking protection is one. And it's funny, I feel like a lot of the things that have happened since the fourth edition came out again, just in March. I feel like a lot of the things that have happened that have been pretty big, have been a little bit of a mixed bag. 

And I think link tracking protection is absolutely one of those. It's either a really big deal for you, or it's absolutely nothing. And that's because link tracking protection, what it does is it in Safari it strips out certain parameters from URLs that resolve from emails into Safari. And for the most part, the parameters that are on the list that Apple's stripping out doesn't impact email marketers, but it definitely does impact some ESPs. 

Some ESPs have been using tracking parameters that essentially go, that are like kind of used well beyond the email channel. You know, they're being used more generally on the web and across channels. And some of those got targeted and they're being stripped out. Now that said, if you're one of those customers of one of those ESPs, you still may not have a problem because if redirects are being used on your email links, then Safari doesn't strip out those parameters unless safari is in safe browsing mode, which generally most people don't have that on by default. So, if you have links redirecting, which is what most CSPs use for link tracking, then you're just fine, even if your parameters are being stripped out otherwise, even if they're on that list. So again, for the most part, link tracking protection is not a big deal for email marketers. 

Thank goodness, but I know that when it came out, everyone was like, Oh no, what's Apple done to us this time? Like everyone was so primed after MPP, they were just like, Oh gosh, the last thing Apple did, you know, that had protection in the name was just catastrophic and like changed, you know, everything about how like we measured performance and monitored deliverability, like all these things. Oh no, what's this one going to do? And for the most part, most brands aren't going to be significantly impacted. There are some folks who, if they are with an ESP that doesn't do link redirects. You might think about changing platforms. And there are some cases where you need to turn that on and maybe you don't have it on. So that's something that everybody should check. But for the most part, you know, woo, you know, dodged a little bit of a bullet with link tracking protection. Not really a very big deal.

And thankfully, there's those blogs, there's book resources, there's so many things that are going to help get the word out. And I think when something like that happens, there is definitely good amount of resources that are out. And you know, people start talking about it. 

There's people that are smarter than me that are going to break those things down in a way that's consumable and really allow us to know and understand what those changes are going to be. So pay attention to that kind of stuff. And I know it's not always the easiest thing to pay attention to and not always the easiest thing to notice, but you know, when they do happen, I think it's good, it's a good call out for everybody to hate, you know, perk up a little bit, just kind of keep your ear to the ground and you're sure you're going to hear it if it's going to be one of those significant things that will break something. 

And I know cause I mean with mail privacy protection happened a little while ago you know, and I thought this was one of the conversations we had previously about, hey, it's been a thing. There's data that is kind of missing now and in the sense of, you know, we don't have clear visibility into things and with it being the next anniversary of this, like, what does that then change the landscape to?  

And I mean I think this is an important thing to talk about too, because it's, you know, again, changes that happened. We paid attention and adjusted, but now like the next step of that is what do we do with our own internal data? And I know Chad, I know you had some thoughts about this too. What do we do with the old data that we had that is now slightly tainted because of the mail privacy protection stuff?

Yeah, we did a webinar recently on sort of deliverability landscape and what was going on. And we got a question about like, you know, is the worst over for MPP? And we're like, Oh, I hate to inform you it's not because now we're passing that two year mark and the two year mark is really important because, you know, a lot of brands that use like a 12 month window. 

You know, they just expanded to 18 and we had folks who were using an 18 month window when they expanded to 24 and going past 24 months is really dangerous. You know, the 2 year mark you run into. You know, inactivity markers for email accounts Yahoo and Gmail retire accounts that become inactive for a period of two years. 

Actually Yahoo, I think it's after a year now Gmail is too. So that's an important mark also Castle and GDPR both have provisions that talk about a two year window on inactivity with subscribers and customers. So legally, depending on where you're operating, that two year mark is sort of a dangerous time period. 

Also recycled spam traps, that two year mark starts to get really, really dangerous to push beyond that. And I think this holiday season, we kind of got off a little bit easy. Cause you know, folks probably like kind of fudged it a little bit. And I think everything is fine. We'll know more cause we're recording this, you know, sort of during the holiday season, but I think everything's going to be fine. But certainly next holiday season people are going to have to be very careful about, you know, audience expansion and really what it boils down to is just having to take a much more holistic look at what your subscribers are doing, you know. 

Are they active in your app? Are they active on your website? Are they making purchases? You know, using other information, you know, to kind of validate, you know, that, oh, they're an email subscriber and they're like they're buying and they're engaging with other channels. And you have to sort of make some assumptions, which sounds maybe a little bit scary, but frankly, you should have been doing that even prior. 

If you have a really good customer, who's, making purchases regularly, they're an email subscriber, you don't really see any activity. That's not someone that I would take off my list. Due to inactivity, because you would see Oh, this is someone who's highly engaged with the brand. And there's even pre MPP, there are all these ways that folks could appear to be inactive. 

You know, maybe they didn't have images enabled, maybe hopefully you have really good subject lines that cause people just to see your subject line and say, ah, you know. I see they're having a sale. I'm going to go to my local store. Right. That's great. I love that. I know that's not what email marketers always want. 

They always want like that full chain of activity, but you know, my point of view is like, you should be writing subject lines that can drive action in and of themselves. And frankly, even just the sender name reminds people that you exist. Again, these are people who already like your brand, right? 

Like they've raised their hand. They're like, I want to hear more. Sometimes you send an email. It's about something that they don't care anything about, but they see your sender name and they're like, Oh, that reminds me. I need to go and do something else with this brand that I love. That's also great, incredibly difficult to like piece those things together, but that's the world that we live in now is that you need to kind of like draw these faint lines, these dotted lines between this activity you know, it's very like customer centric view, and then you just need to make some assumptions, some educated assumptions, and then watch your data to see what happens. 

Fortunately, that's where we're at. It's complicated for sure, but that's where we're at.

Like I think there was a need for consumer protection and I think that's what, you know drove a lot of those changes, but when it comes down to it, is that. You know, we definitely have senders who do not respect their audience and those do exist. And we can't ignore that part of it. 

But I think there's definitely a good portion of customers and I know a lot of the customers that we work with in each one of our respective fields. That's what they're after is they want to make sure they're paying attention to their consumers, their users. And this is a great way to do it is like, you know, drawing, getting information and, you know, sometimes it happens. 

Sometimes somebody does go away and sometimes somebody gets disengaged. Sometimes they, you know, abandon an email address that they forgot they had and start utilizing something new because it's a shiny new email address that they have you know, better control over or whatever the case is, and then we need to make sure of that from the sending side, we're paying respect to that also. So there's definitely a lot to that. And I think it definitely is nice to see people talking about it and people doing and adjusting. So, you know, again, thanks for, for calling it out and bringing bring it to everybody's attention. 

I think is a good thing and I think we're all trying to do that in our own ways and through different mediums So, it's nice when everybody can kind of agree and move the right way. I don't know nick you've been kind of quiet and I want to hear from you man like is there anything that you would say different or want to add to that?

You can't just look at an email open, which I know everyone was scared we were going to be losing, which we have lost a lot of that trackable data, but you have to understand the user and what they're doing. Chad mentioned, you know, what are they doing on your app? What are they doing on your site? 

Are they buying stuff? That should be your indicator that this is a good customer, not whether they opened an email or not. So yeah, nothing really different than what's already been discussed, but just like kind of echoing that you just have to look at things more holistically from those customers.

Opens and clicks, like we always have. And that still works. And frankly, works really really well. And then for the folks that we don't, then we do all this other stuff. But when you have the opens, I hate to say it, like incredibly valuable. Opens have never been perfect. They've never been perfectly accurate. 

And I know that there are lots of people are very happy to point out how inaccurate opens are, but the signal was so frequent that the fact that it wasn't very accurate, didn't really matter, opens are still incredibly useful and especially for measuring the engagement rate of your subscribers. 

So determining who's engaged and who's not. So if you have those signals, use them. And there are some people who have enabled MPP, but don't always check their email in Apple mail. Sometimes they'll go and they'll check their email on Gmail. So sometimes you get real opens, even for those folks who've enabled MPP. 

Use those signals. Those signals are very, very valuable. So, you know, let's not write off opens, but definitely think of it as like two different audiences. Now you have your MPP audience and you have everybody else. And for everybody else, the old rules still work really well and are way more straightforward.

Well, I know there's the big thing, the big topic that I'm sure we could go on for a whole another hour, but we don't have that amount of time. But we do want to touch on the Google and Yahoo you know, the new standards that are coming out for bulk senders. 

So, you know, to address the elephant in the room what do we do here? Like what is that looking like? I know there's been a few knee jerk reactions that are just this is the fire and brimstone that we've been waiting for. And this is the end of the world. But I think you know, there's the other school of thought, which is like, Hey, this isn't too crazy. 

It's something that should have been done. It's something that is happening. It's something that's going to happen, I think, in a lot more places. And then how do we adjust and continue you know, through that. So, who wants to give a brief rundown of what that is in case somebody's jumping into this fresh. Nick?

This is why I was being quiet earlier. I want to listen to Chad talk about the book and all of these other topics. So yeah, I mean, Google and Yahoo are both doing some changes that I will be the first to say that I think is the right thing. It's going to cause some heartache with some customers. But the end goal of this is they want to provide a better experience to their customers. I think people sometimes forget to remember that we probably all have Gmail addresses this day and age. 

We want to log in and not be inundated with stuff that we don't want to see. And that's kind of what's driving all of the changes that they've made over the years. They're just taking a harder stance on authentication. Namely, there's a couple changes that, you know, are important here. 

But I think the authentication piece is probably the biggest they're going to be doing changes around you know, stuff related to like inbound or forwarded messages with arc list unsubscribed headers. But yeah, the authentication piece. Especially as it relates to DMARC, I think is a big one that has senders kind of rushing to get stuff taken care of right now. 

And I've chatted with Chad about this already a little bit, it depends on, you know, who you are as a sender or as an ESP. I had the fortunate ability to see this from like two different sides because we have two email platforms, Mailgun and Mailjet. 

Mailgun, we've always been kind of forcing authentication on senders. So those concerns aren't as big, but on Mailjet, it's a little more lax because it's a different audience that we've always targeted that product towards. So you will probably have more small medium businesses, mom and pop shops that, you know, maybe they don't own a domain and they're using a free mail service. 

That's another thing that Google has mentioned in their update. Like you can't use gmail. com as your from address unless you're sending from within Google servers. So, you know, that's something that isn't going to matter to, you know, a big brand, like they're not doing that. But it just depends on who the sender is and how much these new rules will impact them.

And in some cases went in and like disabled it when they have the option. So they'll have to turn that back on and do it the right way. So like, that's not a big deal. That I think is always been a net positive, right? Like, cause some people don't trust the unsubscribed link that we include in our emails. 

And so having something that's in, you know, at the inbox interface level. I think that's really good. That's something that they can trust. That's not the report spam button. And that's always the fallback, right? So, you shouldn't fear list unsubscribe, because the fallback is having a spam complaint, which that hurts your deliverability, and unsubscribe does not. 

So, I think that's very good. Also they're saying that folks need to be able to process an unsubscribe request within two days. I think that's easy for most everybody. You know, I had a, I had like a colleague say like, Oh, I wonder what the FTC thinks about that. Like, because it's supposed to be 10 days under CAN- SPAM. 

But CAN- SPAM is ancient, like 2003 is when that was passed. It's ancient, ancient technology and everyone is like sort of chronically misunderstood even what that provision meant. It was really intended for highly distributed organizations. Think like, insurance companies with like all of these different brokers. 

It gave them, you know, those 10 days to be able to circulate unsubscribes across like their network so it could be honored. And obviously, even if you're batching overnight like you don't need 10 days to do that, right? Like our technology is so much more sophisticated. So two days to honor an unsubscribe. 

That's not very difficult for 99. 999 percent of folks. That's not a big deal. And then also. One of the really nice things about what Yahoo and Gmail are doing is that they're being transparent about the complaint rates that they are willing to tolerate. And they say that folks should be not higher than 0.1 percent and definitely not higher than 0.3 percent . I think those are really, really reasonable thresholds.

And again, our clients tend to be very large senders. They have all their own domains, pretty much already authenticated. You know, fully with DMARC, really not a big deal. At all for like the vast majority of our clients which is great. But as Nick said it's folks who are on shared IP addresses. 

It's really small senders, you know, who maybe you're operating off of a Gmail account or Gmail address. Those folks looks like they're in for some adjustments and I'll be really curious to see how it plays out. Really, this, honestly, that part of the discussion is really out of my depth because I don't have a ton of experience with shared IP addresses and shared domains or anything like that. 

But it seems like some sort of some type of network. Authentication is what's probably going to happen. I was talking to my colleagues just the other day about this, and they think that, you know, maybe Google and Yahoo may actually back off of this requirement for smaller senders. Because the answer, like what they're supposed to do is not really clear and this is supposed to go into effect in February. 

So it might be something that they enforce everything else and they don't enforce that portion for some period of time. Maybe they come back and give people some guidance because I know that a lot of ESPs that operate, you know, shared IP addresses, which, affect a lot of senders in terms of sheer numbers they're not clear what to do. 

Definitely some big question marks there. Thankfully for among larger senders this is not much of an event and only positive because it tells people exactly what they need to do, what thresholds they need to pay attention to. So in general I thought this was all very positive, and it was great to see. 

The other thing that's really amazing here is it's Google and Yahoo collaborating on essentially a standard between the two. And I know that everyone here realizes how infrequent it is for there to be collaboration across inbox providers. And, you know, It affects our rendering and our deliverability and it makes everything really chaotic. 

We would love for there to be standards like there is on the web, you know, even just for coding, that would be a godsend. But that's not how our world operates. So it was really awesome to see Google and Yahoo, like saying, look. We're going to agree in that this is what folks need to pay attention to, to get into our good graces. 

I would love to see Microsoft and Apple join in and also like agree to these things. That would be fantastic.

Whereas, you know, Apple, you know, yes, they have iCloud. com addresses, but like very small, very small, but. You know, the Apple mail platform is enormous, so they have impact on that side, but it would be great to see all of them collaborate on anything.

And it's when all this is all said and done in a few months when it goes into full effect and see how that works out.

Chad, thank you so much. I know we have a few more things that we did want to talk about, so hopefully that we can save those for next time. I'm really excited, but I really do appreciate the time that you've spent with us today. If people want to find your book and more information about you, where can they go, sir?

Right on and Thomas, if they want to find some more information about us, where can they go?

Look at your list holistically And until the next time have a great day!