How can you stay a step ahead in the AI race? That's a great question, and there's no single definitive answer. In my opinion, the best approach is to commit to continuous learning and remain open to new information. What do I mean by that? Well, many people tend to compare...

"They basically all do the same thing". That’s a lot of marketers' views on ESPs, and if we take the basic purpose of sending and tracking a bunch of emails then yes, this is true. But those of you in the Only Influencers (OI) community know this isn’t really the case....

WARNING: What you’re about to read might challenge your beliefs, shake your complacency, and make you rethink everything you thought you knew about email marketing. Consider yourself warned. I’m not here to sugarcoat the truth or coddle fragile egos. My mission is clear: to cut through the noise, the endless chatter,...

Today, I’d like to share some insights into unsubscribes—an approach I’ve used for years and highly recommend, especially with the holiday season approaching. Unsubscribes can feel alarming; they’re often seen as a sign that something is wrong with your content, personalization, or offers. But unsubscribes shouldn't be viewed as a single...

I started thinking about this over-sunsetting while working with one of my clients. They are probably one of the strongest performing senders I’ve ever met. BUT they are struggling with list retention and growth. It kills me to see well-intentioned senders struggle with their business when they are doing all the...

As Q4 and the holiday madness swings into high gear, I want to look back at everything I've learned in the last 12 months, at how that shaped our business and my conversations with marketers and executives, and how it will affect our communal outlook and planning for 2025 and beyond....

Summary Have you noticed a shift in the email marketing landscape? As the lines blur between digital channels, channel experts are being asked to deliver more than just great email campaigns — they’re now expected to create unified, seamless experiences across web, social, SMS, and more. This blog dives into the...

Why adding SMS to your Email Marketing Journey is a good thing I would have rolled my eyes a year ago if you had told me I would write a blog about adding SMS to the mix. But today, my view has shifted. SMS, like email, is a great retention channel....

This survey marks the 4th year that Only Influencers and Email Connect have conducted a brief survey with brands. The first three years we focused primary on RFPs and email marketers’ potential plans to switch vendors in the upcoming year. This year we decided to take the focus off of RFPs,...

Regardless of whether you are a believer that AI is going to revolutionize every industry for the better or a skeptic who sees AI as a threat to original content creation and a host of other ‘human’ roles, I think everyone agrees that AI is here to stay. In the email...

Picture this scenario: The marketing team at your scrappy little company huddles for days hashing out the brand guidelines for a critical new product launch. The results, everyone agrees, are brilliant. The name is snappy, memorable and perfect. The tag line says it all. With all-hands-on-deck intensity everything quickly goes public...

In our previous article , we explored how we’ve automated email production with GenAI. While we’ve embraced the technology, we’re still building trust in the content of AI-generated emails. This has led us to seek ways to further improve that content, recognizing that better context significantly enhances email effectiveness. What can...

Picture this: LLMs, your CRM, and your analytics platforms, all working together in perfect harmony. It's like having a marketing supergroup, each member bringing their own unique skills to the table. LLMs crank out personalized email copy that's so good, it feels like it was written just for you. Your CRM...

As an email marketer, it can feel like bad things are always happening to us. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection making it much more difficult to adhere to inbox providers own rules around emailing only engaged subscribers Apple’s Link Tracking Protection making conversion tracking harder for some senders Gmail’s policy of Automatic...

I just got results back from a test we ran on the email invitations we send to subscribers on our Email & More, A Q&A with ... list, and I wanted to share them with you, my fellow Only Influencers, because so many of us sponsor webinar series and other events....

Much of my career has been devoted to the exploration of personalization. Searching for answers to one essential question: How we make our content, our marketing, our service, and our products more relevant and more personal? Twenty or so years ago, about midway in my career, I published a book on...

As programming chair for Email Innovations World since 2020, I’ve reviewed a lot of proposals to speak. And as someone who’s been speaking at industry conferences for more than 20 years, I’ve probably written nearly as many as I’ve reviewed! So here are some tips to make your speaking proposal stand...

Let’s begin with a thought experiment. Close your eyes for one second and imagine two people. Person one is an Android user. Person two is an iPhone user. What do you see? How are they the same? How are they different? What were they wearing? What cars do they drive? What...

Soon comes the busy holiday season lots of marketers and companies anticipate and fear at the same time. Want to stand out and make the most of it? Here's the solution that we've been using for the last few years: launch a special project that goes beyond the usual email format...

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...