I recently returned from Affiliate World Europe, where I moderated a panel on email marketing. Our topic focused on why marketers and brands should consider the email channel if they aren’t already using it. We got a lot of great feedback on the session, but in a 30-minute panel discussion, we...

Every year or two when Gartner releases its Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs (MMH), my inbox lights up. Vendors boast, competitors complain, and clients ask me, “Do we take this seriously?” The answer, of course, is “Yes… but also, not really.” Gartner’s MQs are like the Oscars. Winning matters because...

In today’s hyper-competitive digital landscape, brands are under intense pressure to convert visitors into customers, subscribers, or leads. But, in chasing those conversions, many resort to tactics that obliterate the ethical line between friendly persuasion and outright manipulation. These tactics are dark patterns. We've heard the ethics of dark patterns discussed...

The other week I clicked Gmail’s new “Manage Subscriptions” tab. In less than thirty seconds, my cluttered universe of digital mail was purged. Brands I'd forgotten I'd ever subscribed to were shown in a tidy list, ranked by how often they’d emailed me. One click to unsubscribe. Poof, gone. Then the...

I’ll be honest. Most AI-generated emails are cringeworthy. While they’re well-structured and grammatically correct, they don’t feel like they were written for anyone in particular. More like they were pulled from the same endless drawer labeled “ChatGPT prompts that create great emails.” Here’s the problem: If your email could be sent...

For the nearly two decades I’ve been in the email marketing industry, everyone has always fretted about whether or not they’re sending too much email—and then they’ve gone ahead and sent more email. A few years ago, I spoke to a reporter who was convinced that email frequency was absolutely out...

Email marketers are turning to AI faster than ever – but with so many tools on the market, how do you know which ones actually deliver ROI, and which are just hype? The key is not in adopting AI for AI’s sake(big mistake), but in selecting tools that connect directly to...

If you disappeared suddenly, could your email team carry on? Or would they struggle to pick up the slack? This is relevant now because people are taking time off for vacation. But illnesses, family emergencies, unexpected layoffs, and other disruptions can pull you away from work without warning, leaving you no...

During a recent nightly Instagram scroll, I noticed something annoying that I’ve seen before. Much of the content from the brands I follow was outdated. For instance… A restaurant promoting “tonight’s special’ – from 3 night ago A sale – which had ended a week ago A featured wine discount –...

This year marks the fifth time that we’ve teamed up to conduct our annual survey of email marketers. If you find the results valuable, thank the following organizations, and watch for our 2026 survey. Even better: if you have a list of email marketers, reach out to learn how to help...

We've all seen the vendor-backed surveys: glossy reports that confidently tell us why brands are struggling with CRM personalisation. They present familiar charts and familiar answers - data siloes, data quality, lack of resources - each ready-made to support the vendor's pitch. But in practice, those aren't the real blockers anymore....

If you manage email campaigns, you’re doing more than sending messages—you’re managing relationships. This post will help you reframe your role by: Showing leadership how email drives real business outcomes Turning behavioral data into customer insight Structuring campaigns around the customer journey Naming campaigns with strategy in mind for better reporting...

If you’re a regular reader of the Only Influencers (OI) newsletter, you may have noticed a shift in 2024. We took the OI newsletter from once a week to twice-a-week — moving from Wednesday drops to Tuesday and Thursday sends. Why? Because our content had outgrown its container. Here’s what we...

Everyone seems to have an opinion about “no-reply” email addresses. If you read the usual commentary, you’ll find almost no one speaking in their favour - it’s all “no-reply is bad,” “it’s unfriendly,” “it kills engagement.” But here’s the interesting bit: there is no empirical evidence anywhere that a no-reply address...

Many organizations treat email as just another task on the to-do list, rather than a strategic communication channel that demands care and precision. Too often, different departments operate in silos, each with their own approach to email, resulting in deliverability issues that can negatively affect the entire organization. There’s a tendency...

Interactive emails let users take action—like completing a survey or booking—without leaving the inbox. Fewer clicks mean less friction, better results, and a more enjoyable experience. From polls and quizzes to gamified product carts, interactive emails feel like mini apps people actually want to use. To enable this, most teams turn...

What is an email newsletter? That’s a serious question. Think about it for a minute. What is an email newsletter? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and here’s what I came up with: An email newsletter is a message format that mostly contains non-promotional content that’s of interest to...

If you have been following my posts here on the Only Influencers blog, you'll know that I'm just as fascinated by the psychology behind email marketing as I am about the mechanics. Maybe even more so! That's because I want to understand why our customers do what they do with our...

Picture this. It's 2027. You open your inbox and immediately get buried beneath an avalanche of AI-generated noise. Every brand knows your name, shoe size, breakfast choice, and probably the last embarrassing question you asked ChatGPT. Yet somehow, none of these emails feel remotely personal. It’s cluttered, overwhelming, exhausting. It’s the...

What if the "death" of cold B2B email has been greatly exaggerated, and you're just three strategic shifts away from doubling your response rates? Discover why the marketers seeing breakthrough results in 2025 aren't sending more emails, they're sending smarter ones, leveraging AI in ways you might not have considered. Ready...