Sun Locke
← The Locke Ledger

Publication archive

All stories.

A running record of our thinking about marketing, design, and the decisions behind useful work.

Archive

22 stories
Sort byMost recent
Filter byAll articles
  1. 01StrategyWhy Your Email List Needs a Cleanup Before Black Friday.Gmail recalculates each sender's spam complaint rate every day, so the addresses most likely to complain should come off the list in late October or early November, before Black Friday sends begin.
  2. 02StrategyMost of a Holiday Campaign Is Decided Before the First Sale Email.Holiday campaigns are mostly decided before the first sale email: in the list, the sending pattern, and the texting permissions a business already has.
  3. 03StrategySixteen Holiday Texts Short Enough to Bill as One Message.One emoji can turn a holiday text billed as one segment into a text billed as three. These sixteen samples, from early access to the thank you, are written to fit in one.
  4. 04StrategyBlack Friday Ads Are Mostly Won or Lost in Early November.Google and Meta review every new ad, and their bidding needs time to settle after a big change. Cost per result tends to rise with budget, so a change that restarts review or learning during the sale costs the most.
  5. 05StrategySend Loyal Buyers and Lapsed Subscribers Different Black Friday Emails.The same discount means something different to a loyal customer, a subscriber who clicks but has never bought, and someone who bought once three years ago. Each should get a different email.
  6. 06StrategyHow to Keep Holiday Email Out of the Spam Folder.Google's Postmaster Tools can take a day or longer to show how a holiday send landed, so the next send is often planned before the last is judged. Bounces from a small first batch arrive within minutes.
  7. 07StrategyWhy Your Black Friday Page Should Use the Same URL Every Year.The page that collected links and bookmarks last November can carry them into this year's sale, if it is still at the same address.
  8. 08StrategyHow to Warm Up Your Email List Before Black Friday.A sender that triples its volume overnight looks, to a filter, like an account that was compromised. Raise volume gradually instead, starting with the people most likely to click.
  9. 09StrategyHow to Tell a Marketing Strategy From a Pile of Tactics.The Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz defined strategy and tactics in On War, published in 1832. Small businesses still blur the two whenever a tool gets called a plan.
  10. 10StrategyHow Many Abandoned Cart Emails Should a Store Send?Shopify, Klaviyo and Mailchimp set different counts and delays for cart reminder emails, and only Klaviyo cites research for its advice. A store has to choose its own sequence and measure what it brings back.
  11. 11StrategyHow to Time Holiday Marketing to the Weeks Your Customers Shop.Holiday shopping falls into four windows between October and early January. Each idea in this guide is timed to the window when its buyers are shopping.
  12. 12StrategyAfter Google's September Spam Update, Don't Rush to Rewrite Your Site.Search numbers move for many reasons, and only some of them have anything to do with Google's spam rules.
  13. 13StrategyWhat Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook Require From Email Senders.The three largest consumer inboxes agree on how a sender proves its identity and disagree on volume limits, unsubscribe methods and what happens to senders who fall short.
  14. 14CultureWho Gets the Abandoned Cart When the Shopper Is an Agent?AI shopping assistants can browse and fill carts on a person's behalf, so a store may see every click without ever learning who the shopper is.
  15. 15CultureWho Gets to Be the Customer When AI Does the Shopping?AI tools that shop and pay for people are being tested now, but by particular groups of buyers and businesses rather than by everyone at once.
  16. 16CultureHow Public Relations and Marketing Work Together in LLM Search.As people ask language models what to trust, the public record around a business becomes more valuable and more difficult to interpret.
  17. 17BusinessA Small Business Earns More Trust by Keeping Less Customer Data.Large companies set rules for who can see customer information and how long it is kept, and a small business can borrow that habit without buying new software.
  18. 18BusinessWhich Kind of Meta Verification Is Your Business Facing?Meta asks businesses to confirm who they are in more than one way, and each process can involve different owners, documents and results.
  19. 19StrategyIs Your Website a Digital Business Card?Many small business sites list the basics and stop there, leaving interested visitors without a reason to trust them or a clear way to reach out.
  20. 20StrategyThe Digital Strategy Pieces Most Businesses Miss.Posting more or running ads feels like progress, but without a clear goal for the rest of the plan to serve, there is no way to judge whether either is working.
  21. 21StrategyWhy Most Owners Can't Tell What Social Media Earns Them.Most small businesses cannot tell which posts lead to a sale, because the path from a post to a purchase leaves the app and rarely takes a single click.
  22. 22StrategyBig Inbox Providers Now Refuse Some Email Outright.Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft now expect senders to prove who they are, and Gmail and Yahoo also watch how often people mark that mail as spam.