Bill McCloskey is the founder of Only Influencers and eDataSource.

Unboxing eDataSource: The Tool that Started it All

Last week I had a rare experience of a lifetime: seeing the evolution of an idea I had in my garage 13 years ago fully transformed into a powerful marketing tool used around the world. And for me it was an incredibly humbling experience. Let me explain: 

Continue reading
  9185 Hits

Your Email Marketing Plan For The Holidays

Your Email Marketing Plan For The Holidays

(The following is the executive summary of a new report: "2016 Holiday Email Marketing Report" from Mailcharts. Download the full report here.)

Email marketing is crucial to your holiday success. Online sales reached $89.01 billion in Q4 2015 with email marketing driving 20% of that revenue. Online retailers know that email marketing is big business: email volume increased by 23% in Q4 2015 (compared to Q4 2014). Expect to see a similar increase in email volume during Q4 2016. Do you have a solid plan for the most important time of the year? Here’s our view on exactly what you should do. Let’s go!

Continue reading
Tags:
  5138 Hits

LiveInterview: Liam Doyle, Salesforce Marketing Cloud

LiveInterview: Liam Doyle, Salesforce Marketing Cloud

The concept of “Identity” is having an identity crisis. While there has never been more data available for reaching and leveraging customers, there is a lack of resolution, both conceptually and practically, around the industry as to what it really means.

Continue reading
  3100 Hits

LiveIntentional Weekly: What’s Audience Extension?

LiveIntentional Weekly: What’s Audience Extension?

  Despite the seemingly infinite real estate of the Internet, realistically, there is only a certain amount of inventory any individual publisher is going to have to sell that’s actually worth anything. So what’s the best way for publishers to provide more impressions without having to create new content or cramming...

Continue reading
  2320 Hits

LiveIntentional Weekly: How Verizon’s Acquisition of Yahoo! Impacts Google and Facebook

LiveIntentional Weekly: How Verizon’s Acquisition of Yahoo! Impacts Google and Facebook

After a long rumored courtship, Verizon finally pulled the trigger, acquiring Yahoo! for the sum of $4.8 billion dollars, raising questions about whether this move would put the massive telecom company in a position to turn Google and Facebook¹s digital media duopoly into a triopoly (which, we’ve just recently learned,is not...

Continue reading
  2403 Hits

Amy Mullen: Best Practices for Abandoned Cart Emails

Amy Mullen: Best Practices for Abandoned Cart Emails

68% of online shoppers abandon their carts. Sad, right? All those lonely, forgotten products… not to mention all that potential revenue your business is missing out on. For retailers, that comes out to $18 billion annually.

Continue reading
  6340 Hits

OI Turns 6: A Year End Review and Where We are Headed in 2017

OI Turns 6: A Year End Review and Where We are Headed in 2017

It is that time of year again. The week before the Labor Day weekend when Email Marketers are away on vacation, clinging to their last grasp of summer, and all my blog writers are laying on the beach sipping My Ties. So every year, it is my turn to take the blogger reins and talk about my thoughts and dreams about where Only Influencers is headed next year.

Continue reading
  6149 Hits

The Friday Pitches: August Edition

The Friday Pitches: August Edition

Every Friday the members of Only Influencers get to pitch their new products and services. Here is a sample from the last month.

Continue reading
  5325 Hits

LiveIntentional Weekly: The LiveIntent Integration with LiveRamp

LiveIntentional Weekly: The LiveIntent Integration with LiveRamp

Ever wish your cookies were actually people?

Not the yum-yum type cookies, but the cookies that you use to identify and target consumers across different channels like Third Party Web Sites, Search, and Social Networks.

Continue reading
  3164 Hits

LiveIntentional Weekly: What Google’s ‘My Activities’ Page Means for Brands

LiveIntentional Weekly: What Google’s ‘My Activities’ Page Means
for Brands

Lost in all the hullaballoo in recent weeks over Pokémon Go was the news that Google recently made available a ‘My Activity’ page, which makes it possible for people to see all the information Google has related to their user login.

Continue reading
  2865 Hits

Kristy LaPlante: Who’s the real winner: Pokémon, or Email?

Kristy LaPlante: Who’s the real winner: Pokémon, or Email?

By now, you’ve played Pokémon Go. And if you haven’t, you’ve witnessed someone who is playing it.

Welcome to the world of mainstream augmented reality. Before we dig deeper into the implications of Pokémon Go to Email Marketing – and yes, there are several – let’s begin with a complete understanding of what augmented reality is and how it came to be.

Continue reading
  6427 Hits

Email Can Help Make Pokemon Go a Long Term Success

Email Can Help Make Pokemon Go a Long Term Success

Pokemon Go became the top downloaded and top grossing app when it was released three weeks ago. It already has more Daily Active Users (DAUs) than Twitter, and there’s probably much more to come —Niantic, the developer, has hinted at features that will involve bricks-and-mortar stores and may drive even more usage. In short, Pokemon Go is a massive hit.

Continue reading
  3939 Hits

Ellen Watkins: 3 Life Changing Results from Writing for the OI Blog

Ellen Watkins: 3 Life Changing Results from Writing for the OI Blog

The simple email announcement came across my desk. All kinds of thoughts raced through my head and I considered all aspects of it in a matter of seconds. Do it! Don’t do it. Ack! Reach out and try. Move beyond your cube walls. This is an example of what you’ve been looking to do. What happens if peers and current leadership find out? What will it bring? What will it hurt? You’re not good enough. You are good enough. What will you say? You’ll figure it out somehow. And, in a split second I made a gut-decision and said yes to being one of the first contributors to the OI blog.

Continue reading
  5444 Hits

A Tale of Two Emails (and a Call to Arms)

A Tale of Two Emails (and a Call to Arms)

I recently signed up for two very different email lists, Pottery Barn and Chubbies. Why on earth would I add more email to my already exploding inbox? In the case of Pottery Barn, it’s because I want some new towels for my guest bathroom and I was hunting for a discount code. In the case of Chubbies, it’s because I heard from a co-worker that their emails were hilarious, and I wanted to see them for myself.

Continue reading
  5748 Hits

5 Things to think about when choosing your next ESP

5 Things to think about when choosing your next ESP

Having been on both the brand and vendor side – and having been part of multiple decisions to evaluate and/or change ESPs (hint – it’s not as hard as your current vendor makes it seem…nor as easy as your new vendor claims), I’m surprised by how many mismatches between client and vendor still happen. It’s the biggest reason for account churn – bad fit between the client and vendor.

Continue reading
  4653 Hits

LiveIntentional Weekly: How to be the ‘Jon Snow’ of Marketers

LiveIntentional Weekly: How to be the ‘Jon Snow’ of Marketers

The Relevancy Group’s “State of Identity Management Report” recently revealed that when it comes to driving actual revenue, deterministic data pays like a Lannister.

Continue reading
  2486 Hits

Derek Harding: Brexit and Email Marketing

Derek Harding: Brexit and Email Marketing

The UK’s vote to leave the European Union, aka Brexit, came as a shock to many, including a good number who voted for it. In the aftermath many are wondering both what happens now and what the impact will be.

Continue reading
  6238 Hits

LiveIntentional Weekly: Why Microsoft Thinks LinkedIn is Worth $26.3B

LiveIntentional Weekly: Why Microsoft Thinks LinkedIn is Worth
$26.3B

In a story we’re breaking just now, Microsoft has acquired B2B social platform LinkedIn for the mind-numbing sum of $26.2 billion dollars.

Just to put that in perspective, with 26.2 billion dollars, you could buy the Chicago Cubs…. 26 times. That’s about 2.7 trillion years of losing.

That’s why this week, Only Influencer’s partner LiveIntent is taking a look at what it is about LinkedIn that Microsoft thinks is worth all those dolla-dolla-bills, y’all.

Continue reading
  2742 Hits

LiveIntentional Weekly: The Value of Viewability

LiveIntentional Weekly: The Value of Viewability

Viewability ­ or the ability of an ad to actually be seen by a human being has become the critical metric for media buyers and marketing executives alike. There are a number of advertisers and agencies that have publicly stated that they will not pay for any impression that is not 100% viewable.

Continue reading
  2598 Hits

Email trends & innovations we should talk about

Email trends & innovations we should talk about

There were great minds, quality content, and inspiring discussions at the Email Innovations Summit in Las Vegas (May 17–19, 2016). Big kudos to Bill McCloskey and the Only Influencers community for creating a new space where trends, challenges, and opportunities in the email marketing world can openly be discussed.

Continue reading
  8585 Hits