This survey marks the 4th year that Only Influencers and Email Connect have conducted a brief survey with brands. The first three years we focused primary on RFPs and email marketers’ potential plans to switch vendors in the upcoming year. This year we decided to take the focus off of RFPs,...

The 2024 Forrester Email Service Provider (ESP) Wave™ finally dropped today, August 5, and as usual, it’s filled with a mix of great insights, missing vendors, and “what were they thinking?” conclusions. As most of you know, for the last 9 years, my business has exclusively focused on helping enterprise brands...

Since it’s been almost 6 years since I last offered advice on OI as to how to approach your RFP process, I thought it was time to revisit the topic in the OI blog. There have been a lot of changes during that time. So let’s get started! 1. Know when...

Last month Only Influencers hosted a webinar presenting new research from Publicare Marketing Communications GmbH on the most popular ESPs for U.S. E-retailers. Jeanne Jennings moderated, with Marion Krohn and Rober Harnischmacher from Publicare presenting their findings; I was there too, to discuss the findings. You can watch the full 1-hour...

Many of us on the agency, consulting, and vendor sides of the email industry have been in the business for a decade or more. And if you’re like me, there are times when you think to yourself, “If I see one more article or sit through one more conference session on...

ESPs have been continuously evolving since they were first commercially introduced in the late 1990’s. And the evolution of the platform followed a similar pattern that continues to this day. A third party would determine that there was a feature or a function lacking in the existing ESPs and solve that...

This is the third year that Only Influencers and Email Connect have conducted a brief survey with brands regarding their plans to switch vendors in the upcoming year. The survey was originally intended to measure the impact that COVID-19 had on brands’ plans to conduct ESP RFPs in 2020—2022. What we...

I haven’t written recently about the Request-for-Proposal (RFP) process, but given that Halloween is right around the corner, this seemed like as good a time as any to revisit the RFP Crypt and share some examples of RFP horror!  Before sharing some of the scariest RFP stories around, I think we...

I wrote the following back in June of 2020: …let’s take a look at what a CDP is supposed to do. 1. Data Aggregation : Organize all customer data and keep it available for immediate use. Some technical resources are required to set up and maintain the CDP, but they don’t...

The decision of whether to build your own email solution or outsource to a vendor can have serious consequences for the future of your email marketing. It’s not a decision to be made hastily before giving it some serious thought. Reading the rest of this post is a great place to...

In late 2020, Email Connect and Only Influencers put out our first survey of the RFP landscape. We were interested in looking at the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on brands’ plans for ESP RFPs during 2020. Among our survey respondents, 40% of those who had originally planned to conduct an...

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:...

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...

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...

In late December of 2020 I created a short survey to gather data on the impact of COVID-19 on ESP RFP plans for email marketers in 2020. I also included some questions pertaining to what platform features and functions email marketers in 2020/2021 are most interested in exploring in their RFPs....

Any discussion of the features and functionality of ESPs vs. CDPs needs to start with the ESP platforms. ESPs have been around in one form or another for over 20 years, and it should be well-estalbished these days as to what constitutes an ESP. Ah, if only it were so easy....

I found myself recently opening a package that had been delivered to my front door. Inside the box was a chain. You know, the kind that you use with a padlock to lock a bike or other object, to prevent its theft. That was it, a chain. I had ordered it...

The team at Email Connect spends our days working with leading brands to help them through the ESP vendor selection process. But when the sun goes down (OK, sometimes even before that) we become consumers and email subscribers like everyone else. Because of the business we are in, individually and collectively...

Much has changed in the world of email marketing in the last 15 years.  Volumes are up, revenues are up, CPMs are down-and those are just a few of the big changes in the industry.  But one of the biggest changes is in the nature of the vendor/client relationships themselves. Specifically,...

At Marketing Democracy we’re all about email marketing.  We work with some of the biggest email marketers in the industry helping them navigate the complex and critical ESP vendor selection process.  But when we’re done for the day guiding our clients, we revert to being consumers and email subscribers like everyone...