I love when a marketer asks, "how should we measure this?"

Sometimes we get so caught up in opens, clicks, visitors, impressions, and all the other easy-to-get metrics that we forget what we wanted to accomplish in the first place. This is why it is so important to set up a formal approach to measurement before your marketing campaign launches. Yet a lot of marketers don't know where to start.

With endless approaches christened “best practices” and infinite blog posts on the latest email optimization tactics, it can be difficult to determine where it’s worth investing your email marketing money and manpower.

How many times have you faced a technical challenge only to solve it by following someone’s tutorial? I’m sure many of us have done it. I know I have.

That’s all well and good when you’re trying to figure out how to do something personal. But how do you know if the instructions are right? I’ll tell you a secret, not all of them are correct and others are mostly correct but have some suggestions that can cause problems.

Understanding technology means not having to blindly follow technical recommendations without really understanding everything you’re doing. You can actively decide what you’re doing and make the most appropriate decisions for your marketing and your business.

Survey Created by Loren McDonald.

Survey Results

Retargeting has been historically thought of as a lower sales funnel, direct response tactic. But there are some problems with cookies, the pieces of code used to identify and retarget customers, that have lead to a rethinking of retargeting strategies.

This week, Only Influencer¹s partner LiveIntent is looking at how brands are changing the way they think about retargeting ads and how those ads are changing the ways customers think about themselves

Recently, L Brands – parent of Victoria’s Secret and home to the famous (and some would say infamous) Victoria’s Secret catalog – announced a strategic change “evolving how the business connects with customers through more focus on loyalty programs and brand-building engagement rather than traditional catalogues and offers.”

Mark Ash, managing director at Teradata Interactive International, recently told MediaPost’s Sean Hargrave that we’ve seen the end of the days of email being seen as the “ugly duckling” in digital marketing and that, “Email is now the linchpin to our clients as they look to identify people moving from digital marketing’s cookie to in-store purchasing.”

First things first, I can’t stand the “email is dead” myth. It’s something circulated by traditional media, who love calling things dead to put us off the scent of their own problems. However, as an industry, our response has been weak.

OI Survey Results: Do you use links in email copy and how do you style them.

This week we interview Sara Ezrin Larsen, XO Group’s Vice President of Product Marketing and long time Only Influencers member, about XO Group’s email marketing program:

Google AMP, Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News are being adopted as ways to combat two of the biggest challenges facing publishers these days: Ad Blocking and Mobile.

But the things that makes these pages so fast – cached content, little to no JavaScript or third party tags – means losing some audience data, high-impact, high-CPM ad units, and, perhaps most importantly, that direct connection between publishers and their readers as a source.

This week, Only Influencers’ partner LiveIntent explains how to make the most of Google AMP, Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News by turning them into the Guy Fieri of publisher content.

With Spring having fully sprung and consumers buzzing from device to device like bees from flower to flower, it’s important that marketers have an complete understanding of cross-device targeting solutions and mobile strategies available.

That’s why this week, Only Influencer’s partner LiveIntent is digging into the LiveIntentional archives to provide a cross-pollination of their best episodes on cross-device marketing.

Every Friday the Only Influencers Members get's to pitch the membership on their latest tool, product , or service. This is the latest in Email Marketing for Friday April 8th, 2016: 

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...

It has long been an accepted belief that Millennials are so busy Yik-Yaking, WhatAppings, Slacking, and Kiking, that when it comes to email, they literally can’t even. So, how is it possible that according to the 2016 Adestra Consumer Adoption & Usage Study, 77% of Millennials are using email in their everyday life? This week, Only Influencer’s partner LiveIntent is looking into why email is so on fleek for Millennials.

It’s not news that, in most industries, females are paid less than men. But surely, in email marketing, where there is a higher proportion of women than in many other industries, this isn’t the case, right?

Sadly, it is the case, according to Only Influencers’ 2016 Salary Guide. And this needs to be addressed.

“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.

October 27^th, 1994: Display ads make an appearance on this digital rag with the moniker Wired.com with a boffo a click-through rate of 44%.

Are you making what you should? Download the 2016 Only Influencers Email Marketing Salary Guide.