I recently found myself scrolling through a lively LinkedIn thread where the debate over email design strategies was in full swing. On one side, emerging email marketers were singing the praises of image-only emails, while the more seasoned pros favored mixing images with text. This got me thinking: Is one approach...

Recently, I upgraded our newsletter software to introduce a new image-handling service, changing the domain for all image links in our newsletters. Why, you might ask? To give us more control of image rendering in the emerging world of AI. But that’s a topic for another day. But First, A Little...

If you work for a consumer facing brand in sectors such as retail, marketplaces or travel where there is a relatively high propensity to buy multiple times, the chances are you are sat on a goldmine of under explored opportunities in relation to reactivating lapsed customers. I could quote lots of...

Email has become integral to our lives, allowing us to communicate efficiently and effectively. It’s simple to use and all around us - at work, home, and on the move. Email communication and its smooth operation are crucial for the functioning of every business, regardless of its size or industry. Because...

The 2024 Forrester Email Service Provider (ESP) Wave™ finally dropped today, August 5, and as usual, it’s filled with a mix of great insights, missing vendors, and “what were they thinking?” conclusions. As most of you know, for the last 9 years, my business has exclusively focused on helping enterprise brands...

A recent conversation with some well-known folks in the space turned to the question about email frequency; but from the perspective of setting a floor – the minimum number of emails you should send folks on your list – rather than the maximum. Many eCommerce brands spend a lot of time...

We’ve all been trained to look at click data to evaluate the performance of our newsletters.  Click Reach, Click-Through-Rate, Click-To-Open.  Changes to open tracking have conspired to limit the value of the open as a measurement of engagement, which has put even more focus on clicks as the primary engagement metric....

The Challenges of Post-Apple MPP for Email Marketers As email marketers, one of the biggest challenges we face is trying to figure out what content resonates best with our audiences. Prior to Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), a lot of folks were using open rate along with click rate to give...

If one dares to look, one can find that two things that are seemingly unrelated can actually be connected and teach us quite a bit about each other. My work and my kids are huge chunks of my life, so they easily inspire my thinking and get intermingled. Just watching how...

I was listening to an interview recently that discussed how common imposter syndrome is among many professionals today. It got me thinking about how this very common issue might relate to email marketing in general. Defining Imposter Syndrome Imposter Syndrome is described as the psychological experience of having self-doubt in one’s...

In today's digital landscape, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into content creation is becoming increasingly common. As AI tools become more sophisticated, they are capable of generating content that is virtually indistinguishable from that written by humans. This raises a crucial question for content creators: should they disclose the use...

Almost everybody in the email world has gone through a technology platform migration. But few share my perspective as a tech user, platform vendor, and now head of an agency that shepherds enterprise-level companies through the migration maze. Today's technology can do things I couldn't even dream of when I started...

Email marketing - a goldmine of business intelligence. Ready to unlock the hidden power of your campaigns? Read on to transform your email marketing from a communication tool into a strategic powerhouse. From sales to product development, customer service to brand strategy, discover how email insights can give your company a...

There is often a discrepancy between what we, as email marketers, know is a best practice and what consulting clients or higher-ups in our organization tend to ask about. Our responsibility as email marketers is to steer the conversation based on our expertise, even when challenging. Clients/higher-ups should also understand that...

Data visualization is an important part of email marketing and it’s reporting. In fact, many marketers are already using it even if they don’t realize it. For example, if you graph your email metrics over time, then you already visualize your email data. In a real way, making those charts IS...

It was such a pleasure to present ’35 Great AI Ideas in 35 Minutes’ with Tamara Gielen, Materialise, at Email Innovations World 2024! For those of you who missed our presentation, I thought I would present 6 of my ideas here, and another 6 on my Email Optimization Shop blog; I’ll...

GenAI has recently captured significant interest in our industry, particularly for its potential to enhance email creation — from drafting subject lines to generating complete emails. Despite the current hype surrounding GenAI and the many applications being built on it, the practical utility of GenAI often falls short of expectations. Demonstrations...

Most of us marketers consider unsubcribes a fact of life in email. We all-too-often take them for granted. They are considered the unavoidable collateral damage that each passing campaign creates. But what if they were a missed opportunity to learn how our sending behavior may be impacting our effectiveness? We set...

“Wanna go on a road trip?”– my mom would randomly ask when we were kids. Of course, my little brother and I would yell “Yes!!!” We had no clue where we were going but we knew we’d have fun in the car, listening to music and playing the word game where...

There’s no shortage of things in email marketing to be irritated about. The lack of email coding standards, the inconsistent email rendering, the partial support for CSS-based interactivity, the partial support of AMP for email, inconsistent implementations of dark mode, how expensive BIMI VMCs are,… Marketers have also been perpetually frustrated...