One of the foundations of marketing is to test, learn and improve. The learning that comes from constantly trying and testing new approaches and tactics is one of the aspects of marketing that makes it exciting and interesting, even for grizzled veterans like me. “We learn wisdom from failure much more...

Email is the most widely used personal communication channel on the globe, with over 3.8 billion people sending more than 280 billion messages each day. The technical standards that enable this massive message exchange are not ‘owned’ by anyone; by and large, they remain open Internet standards. Google currently provides the...

As email marketers, most of us are focused on how our campaigns perform. Even if our emails aren’t specifically designed to drive leads, sales, or other recipient actions, we still monitor key metrics like Open Rate to at least determine if recipients are looking at the message.  For those email marketers...

Earlier this month during the Email Innovations Summit 2020, we had some fun; we played Family Feud: Email Edition. Armed with the results of our late May survey of the industry, we set out to see who would win a Family Feud game based on email industry survey topics. You may...

In the past, marketers have had a negative opinion about data appending, especially regarding appending of email. Marketers would often find providers giving significant amounts of inaccurate or falsely positioned data, creating a fair amount of distrust. The reasons: Data providers did not have the technology, talent, and time to invest...

During a panel discussion I took part in recently, an audience member asked which companies did the panel think are doing a good job of multi-channel messaging. I thought it was an interesting question because unless you are armed with a knowledge of what data is being used and how it...

One good thing to come out of the coronavirus pandemic is that marketers are rediscovering how to be marketers again, and the evidence is all over the inbox. Email open rates have been going up since COVID-19 lockdowns, quarantines and "safer at home" orders went into effect in mid-March. Granted, more...

I found myself recently opening a package that had been delivered to my front door. Inside the box was a chain. You know, the kind that you use with a padlock to lock a bike or other object, to prevent its theft. That was it, a chain. I had ordered it...

Communities have always been an important part of my personal and professional life – even more so now that I, like many others around the world, am living under a ‘stay-at-home’ order due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There are many different types of communities; each is built on a shared interest...

With Microsoft rolling out more tabs in Outlook and Hotmail to help users organize their inbox by segmenting messages into Promotions, Social, Newsletters, people are naturally wondering what this will mean for marketers and how this will change your ability to reach your users at Microsoft domains. While no one can...

We are living in unprecedented times….. no scrap that…. That’s how every blog post or notification seems to start nowadays doesn’t it?! And actually, how unprecedented is the time we are living in? We’ve seen global (or near global catastrophes) before, whether health related or war related, and as a society...

As I wrote this, Americans were finishing our first full-month of stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of Covid-19, a worldwide pandemic the likes of which our generation has never witnessed. Restaurants, bars and brick-and-mortar retail establishments were shuttered. Office workers (or at least the lucky ones who still had jobs) were...

As the current crises began to unfold, I was interested to note that while we started out by calling the disease Coronavirus, the name COVID-19 began to emerge as the favorite among email marketers for use in Subject Lines (SL). So, a couple of days ago I decided to dig into...

Is it just me, or does it feel like a hoard of lawyers has invaded the inbox? I can’t even count the number of email messages from CEOs I never heard from telling me how important the wellbeing of their employees and their customers is. Or how they are now taking...

The Mandela effect is the name for a collective memory that never happened. It is named after the collective memory that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980’s – he didn’t. Marketing has many of these urban myths but the one also stands out as the most ironic quotes of...

Only Influencers has set up this temporary job board to help email marketing professionals who are looking for work during this difficult time. All email marketing professionals, not just members of the Only Influencers community, are invited to participate.  Special thanks to Ada Barlatt who is helping us manage this!Questions? Reach...

Testing is as essential to your email success as an up-to-date and accurate email address database. It can give you enormous insights into your audience across channels and makes you far more efficient when building campaigns. The increased revenue you will earn from testing will help you create better marketing messages...

Automation is here, AI is here, we have more tools than ever to send truly personalised email marketing. We can analyse and get to know our customers better than ever....and it’s getting a bit creepy. In this blog, let’s take a step back and look at how personalisation should make the...

Some of us have enough years (or miles) to fill in the sound-bite “You’ve Got Mail!” mentally. In a galaxy far, far away, that sound was an endorphin-jolt — the click of the digital mail-slot with a message from someone you knew. (I’d embed the sound patch here but OI doesn’t...

In any big awards event there is always a red carpet spread out for the celebrities and VIPs to walk towards the auditorium. There is a big rush of paparazzi and photographers to take the pictures of these celebrities. They pose for pictures and then get inside the place through a...