The recent announcement that Cheetah Digital and CM Group (Sailthru, Selligent, Campaign Monitor, etc.) are combining forces is just the latest example of the changes rippling through the ESP vendor landscape over the last several years. In the last 12 months, dating back to November 2020, we have witnessed the following:...

Email bombing is a topic rarely discussed in the email industry. However, it’s an issue that affects brands and individuals every day. And, it’s an experience I went through recently with my personal email account. So, what is email bombing? I’ve been in the email space for almost four years now,...

As much as I’m clearly a fan of the email channel there have been a number of occasions recently where I see clients going to email to solve nearly all the commercial problems in their business. Whatever the problem is, the main action always taken is to send another email or...

Back in 1984, Robert Cialdini published a book called “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”. Today, the book is famous for its exploration of factors that affect the decisions that people make, notably when it comes to sales, marketing, and purchasing. These factors can also be incredibly powerful when utilised within email....

Here we are in the middle of October. It's hard to believe how fast this year has gone. It seemed as if 2020 was like riding the slow boat to China, and now we're in the thick of holiday email planning again. I dug out an Only Influencers post I wrote...

Gary Vaynerchuk was quoted as saying “marketers ruin everything”, however, I don’t agree with that broad definition. I’m a glass-half-full guy. Let’s preface that with “Lazy”. Lazy Marketers Ruin Everything! Integrity, truth in advertising, authentic brands, and great products are everywhere.  However, so are the lazy marketers who cut corners, hack...

I've been thinking about the provocative questions Chris Marriott raised in his recent Only Influencers post, Email Marketing’s Next Secret Weapon: Loyalty Programs to spur more email marketers and loyalty program managers to share data.  Two questions in particular keep coming back to mind: How can an email team turn subscribers...

How do you know what the majority of your readers think about your emails after receiving them for a while? Given that the majority of your audience won’t click on an email (a classic success measure) and open rate is diminishing as a measure of engagement, why not simply ask your...

Will AMP for Email survive the Privacy Wave — consumer awareness, public scrutiny, regulatory action, and changes in the technical landscape around data and control? I think not. Being in email is a bit like driving an old car. You love the thing — admit it — but the big screens...

Customer journey mapping helps you understand how your customers interact with your brand and website. But it has another use as well – setting up useful and relevant automated messages. Journey mapping has also proved to be one of the biggest challenges many of my clients face. The whole process needs...

With the drop of iOS about a week away at the time of this writing, we’re in the final stretch of understanding exactly what the effect will be on opens. Assuming that the change plays out as the majority of the industry believes it will, opens will become unreliable for almost...

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection will have a broad range of effects on email marketers, impacting email analytics, design, deliverability, personalization, and optimization efforts. Sadly, subscribers who enable MPP will receive less relevant emails and more emails than they would have otherwise gotten if marketers could better measure their engagement through opens....

If you’ve ever wondered what email metrics to report or how to interpret your campaign’s metrics -- this is for you! As I am sure you are aware, one of the great aspects of email marketing is the data! There is a ton of data generated with every email sent. And...

Privacy. Consumers want it (or at least say they do) and in many cases they feel that companies know too much about them and their activities. Admittedly, you can create surveys that will demonstrate how much consumers value their privacy and others that show how much consumers enjoy marketing that is...

Join me in a look at the Past (predictions from this time last year on Holiday 2020), Present (what we learned from Holiday 2020), and Future (how to apply what we learned in Holiday 2020 to Holiday 2021) of Holiday email marketing, along with 8 tips for making Holiday 2021 a...

10 years ago, a former boss of mine, who I greatly respect to this day, and I were discussing in which direction I should take my career.  He was strongly of the opinion that the brightest future lay in adtech, and that martech, and email marketing specifically, was becoming passe.  In...

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection will have broad implications for how brands operate their email marketing program. These changes are most disturbing because they disrupt norms that have been in place for more than a decade—norms that have served consumers well and kept marketers honest. I would go so far as to...

B2C is one of the most exciting types of marketing. But also one of the most changeable. Advances in technology. Increasing consumer demands. And changing buying habits certainly keep B2C marketers on their toes. Keeping up and implementing the latest trends can be time-consuming. Fortunately, marketing automation can ensure audiences receive...

While there are many emerging marketing channels strategies you/we/me can choose, we may best be advised to start with the assets we have, before chasing the newest shiny object. Lets face it, if we have a solid email subscriber list one could argue that you/we have prospects and clients that use...

Back in the 2000s everyone used to ask ESPs what their email delivery rate was. It was a meaningless number but one ESP would quote 98% delivery rates, the next would just claim 99%. Now you get the same questions around 'is your platform AI driven?' and ESPs have added AI...