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...

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you'll know that I moved into a new house recently. Thanks to the hot housing market, moving is a life event that many of you likely are sharing with me this year. If you, too, relocated recently, you don't need me to expound...

Managing ISP inbox filters continues to be a leading issue for marketers, and it seems to get tougher everyday as ISPs add more and more factors to their screening algorithms.  Whether it’s your content, sending practices, user engagement factors, or improper data hygiene, sometimes it can seem almost impossible to navigate...

Email remains one of the most effective and versatile channels available to marketers. As a result, email constantly evolves; email always finds a way. I'm sure you've heard that all before, and if you're reading this blog, you have an interest in email, and I'm sure you heard plenty of those...

Email, and marketing in general, has been going through a privacy renaissance over the past few years. From GDPR to CCPA to Google announcing the end of support for third-party cookies in Chrome, the privacy landscape has been evolving rapidly. Apple has been an active participant in these privacy evolutions and,...

Data is at the heart of everything we do in email marketing, whether we're building relationships or selling. A healthy and growing database is your most important factor to succeed in every aspect of email. Building a healthy base and growing that base are two separate but related functions. Although you...

Welcome! We've gathered resources from around the Web to help email marketers understand and prepare for 'pixelgeddon' -- the implementation of Apple's new Privacy Protection initatives around tracking pixels and related email tactics.  Have a resource to add? Share it here. Upcoming Webinars On-Demand Webinars and Podcasts Articles and Blog Posts...

Apple announced Email Privacy Protection at their 2021 WWDC. Because the announced changes directly affect ‘tracking pixels’ — used nearly-universally in email marketing — the announcement kicked off considerable discussion in various email communities. Articles range from cheers to yawns to outright consternation, depending on the impact. Working through the impacts...

Once upon a time we could test, learn, and implement without fear or bias. Knowing that our emails would look different for each reader, but happy to work with the majority view. This is no longer the case as this example highlights. Help wanted on what you’ve found, changed and decided...

Apple’s ‘Pixelgeddon’ announcement at their 2021 WWDC event (plus the rumored possibility that other companies in a similar position in the digital world could follow) is one of those before-and-after moments. How people and companies are handling it now — that’s one thing. How they will actually adapt their practices and...

List building has been challenging over the past 18 months, which has now made managing subscribers a challenge. Before talking about the issues that are pressing now, let’s look at how we got here… When coronavirus lockdowns started in March last year, consumer behaviors started to rapidly evolve. Many stores were...

Marketing Operations is the nerve center for an organization’s outbound marketing and CRM campaigns. Often staffed lean, marketing ops is a business-critical function that ensures all the grand marketing plans get executed. It’s where the rubber meets the road. Marketing Ops creates the target audiences, executes the tests, builds the content,...

We know that the key to measuring success with any type of marketing is to track relevant metrics and adjust practices accordingly. But are you taking advantage of all of the data in your email marketing account? Most email marketers are used to analyzing key metrics about opens and clicks within...

Here we are in 2021, getting ready to celebrate the 43rd birthday of email marketing. Who would have guessed back in 1978 that email would become the first digital marketing channel, helping to pave the way for every other digital channel in the next four decades? Maybe even more impressive is...

Part 1—What are the latest trends in pricing models? No one sees more pricing proposals from vendors than we do at Email Connect. As part of the management of our clients’ RFPs, we ask for and compare pricing proposals from the competing vendors. I’m willing to bet that we see more...

A clean list is just one part of creating a successful email marketing program, but it is one of the most important parts. The advantages of doing periodic hygiene and verification on your email database can help you reduce the malicious and low-quality addresses on your list, provide a more accurate...

Do you remember when countdown timers in email first became “a thing”? I think it was around 2010 and I was presenting to a very large entertainment company client and they asked what I thought about countdown timers.They had recently tested them in their email program and were excited to add...

Since the first email was sent in 1971, as a community, we have continuously reflected on how we think about communicating with each other. Video-in-email further enhances the day-to-day email engagement and with recent technology advances, our current industry standard definition for video-in-email will soon be re-written. We will explore the...

I’ve been listening to brand side email marketers a lot over the last 20 years. They’re frustrated. They are resource and time poor. And on top of that, for many, email is one of the last channels to be given much attention. Leadership aren’t much interested, sales just wants marketing to...

As an email marketer for over 18 years across vendor, client and agency side I’m always struck by how much of our time is spent on tactical initiatives and having the feeling of being a factory producing the same campaigns week after week. It seems to me that most email marketers...