The Best of Jeanne Jennings

The Best of Jeanne Jennings

We continue our series of featuring some of the speakers at the upcoming Email Innovations Summit. Jeanne Jennings will be participating in the "Hanging Out Your Shingle: The Good, Bad, Ugly (and Upside!) of Starting an Email Consultancy" panel. Here are some of her most popular OI blog articles. The Mindset...

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Agile Email Testing

Agile Email Testing

“It depends; you should test that” has to be the most frequently used answer to any email marketing question.

And it’s not entirely unreasonable. What’s right for one for one brand isn’t for another.

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Using Machine Learning in Email for 'Always On' Optimization

Using Machine Learning in Email for 'Always On' Optimization

"Machine learning" has moved out of science fiction and into real-life applications, like powering Tesla cars that run on autopilot and robots that can beat humans at the Japanese game of Go. For marketers, it gets them closer to their email nirvana: true 1:1 personalization on a mass scale. Machine learning,...

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Attribution Attribution Attribution: Calculating the effect of Email on other channels

Attribution Attribution Attribution: Calculating the effect of Email on other channels

Many companies struggle with measuring the impact of email on their organizations. As a result, it’s consistently undervalued as a tool in most marketers’ arsenals. As marketers, one of the most effective ways of showcasing the true benefits of a strategic email marketing campaign is to measure and understand the effects of an email, even when there was no open or click – what we call the halo effect.

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Segmentation Is Not the Answer

Segmentation Is Not the Answer

I’m starting to cringe every time I hear the phrase, “We could segment our audience based on that data”.

People hear that phrase and eyes light up and heads bob in agreement. In meetings with the CMO/SVP, the phrase is carefully proffered as a goal about to be fulfilled, and the CMO/SVP solemnly nods and pats everyone on the back for having done a good job.

What utterly useless, well-intentioned bunk.

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Benchmarks and Insights: Click-through Rates, Triggered Messages and Email Newsletters

Benchmarks and Insights: Click-through Rates, Triggered Messages and Email Newsletters

The 3Q 2015 Email Trends and Benchmark Report was released by Epsilon earlier this month. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth taking a look at – reading it 3 things struck me.

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Companies Using Festive Discount Coupons in Emails, And What You Can Learn From Them

Companies Using Festive Discount Coupons in Emails, And What You Can Learn From Them

Coupons are a good way to attract shoppers back to your website during the festive season and January sales. Coupons are known to drive loyalty, and consequently revenue.

As well as old‐style individual and mass coupons, you can use a lot of tricks to preferentially target loyal customers. For example:

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Drip Marketing

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Drip Marketing

A compendium of OI Blog articles on everything you need to know to get started with Drip Marketing.

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The Robots Are Coming: Drip Marketing at it's Worst

The Robots Are Coming: Drip Marketing at it's Worst

I say automation, you think robotic, right?

No wonder. Experienced marketers and consumers alike receive corporate-heavy copy in their messages nowadays. Dry, humorless, stiff, computerized. Or the pendulum swings the other way with over-the-top witticisms and personality that tries too hard. Canned humor gets nowhere.

To strike a balance between robotic and over-friendly in your drip marketing campaigns is difficult, especially trying to let your usual brand voice have a weigh in, too. It isn’t impossible, though.

There are a few strategies that will help you craft conversational, concise copy that doesn’t sound like it came from a machine.

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What Your Drip Messages Are Missing (You Might Be Surprised)

What Your Drip Messages Are Missing (You Might Be Surprised)

In a past Only Influencers article Automated Marketing: Drip vs. Nurture, the author argues that there are drip campaigns and there are nurture campaigns.

I wouldn’t necessarily argue that point, but I would take a different perspective.

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Specific Strategies to Use in Your Drip Marketing Campaigns

Specific Strategies to Use in Your Drip Marketing Campaigns

There are a lot of opinions flying around about drip marketing campaigns. Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people don’t know how to use it well.

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How to Use Drip Email Campaigns to Drive Conversions

How to Use Drip Email Campaigns to Drive Conversions

If you’re like most e-commerce and other online merchants, you depend on regular (and often frequent) promotional campaigns to drive sales. These campaigns are loaded with offers, incentives, and immediate calls to action. But is the prospect really ready to buy? Do you have a relationship? Does your prospect trust you enough to buy from you? Drip email campaigns (also called nurturing campaigns) are the tool every online marketer needs to develop that relationship and trust with prospects that will ultimately result in more sales conversions and greater client loyalty over time.

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5 Mistakes You’re Likely Making (or Likely to Make) with Your DRIP Campaigns

5 Mistakes You’re Likely Making (or Likely to Make) with Your DRIP Campaigns

DRIP campaigns have been shown to improve open, click-through and conversion rates, as well as deliver higher revenue per sale than business-as usual campaigns. They are also somewhat ‘set it and forget it’ – meaning you set them up once and they require minimal maintenance and time from your team to keep them running.

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Deliverability during the Holiday Email Rush

Deliverability during the Holiday Email Rush

It’s August here and the Bay Area is going through one of its rare heat waves. Over the weekend, temps reached over 100 at our house, which normally never sees anything warmer than 80. Despite the summer heat, and the calendar, and the complaints of Christmas coming earlier every year, it really is time for us to start talking about holiday email delivery. 

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Give the Gift of Better Experiences this Holiday Season

Give the Gift of Better Experiences this Holiday Season

As consumers, we cringe at the inexorable tidal wave of holiday ads headed our way. As marketers, we contribute to it. For email marketers, there’s an opportunity to elevate beyond sending five copies of the same catalogue to the guy who bought one item from your store four years ago. There’s a reason that email consistently drives the highest ROI of all direct marketing channels.

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Holiday Email Marketing Tips for the Non-Retailer

Holiday Email Marketing Tips for the Non-Retailer

If yours is a retail or e-tail business revving up your holiday email marketing engines, this advice is not for you (but good luck and Godspeed!)

If on the other hand you’re in the same camp as non-retailers, your email running the risk of being stampeded by the crushing annual blow of “buy now” retail promotional messages to consumer inboxes from September through December, read on.

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5 Tips for Surviving the Holiday Season

5 Tips for Surviving the Holiday Season

Well, it’s past that time of year again. Yes, past. Many companies start planning for the holiday season back in March, so if you’re just starting now…..hurry. Even if you’ve started, begin thinking now about what you can do to juice things up, and survive the holiday rush. Because let’s all admit it, volume will go up and consumers will go crazy. How do you be a hero, try something new and survive the hectic holiday period? Let’s take a look at the things you can do to save yourself and your team.

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The Ultimate Christmas Campaign Planning Calendar 2015

The Ultimate Christmas Campaign Planning Calendar 2015

If you haven’t started your U.S. holiday campaign planning, it’s time to get cracking. To help you move things along, I’ve outlined the major online selling opportunities and created a handy calendar to help you get organized for the busy season. There are 14 important dates to build campaigns around.

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Marketshare of PC's, Tablets, and Mobile

Marketshare of PC's, Tablets, and Mobile

Anyone have current figures on email reading on their PC vs. tablet vs. mobile?  I realize this is a basic question, so if there's some standing public research you can point me to, that'd be awesome, too.

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The Absolute Best Mobile Email Resources

The Absolute Best Mobile Email Resources

Everything You Every Wanted to Know about Mobile Email: A Compendium of the World's Best Free Resources for Learning about Mobile Email Marketing

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