“Quiet people have the loudest minds” as Stephen Hawkings says. “It almost seems as if my brain is trying to compensate for the lack of expression.” While this has a very personal context to me, it does compel thoughts of this digital channel and its evolution in the 25 years I’ve...

What a crazy time in our lives, when we get hit with three historic events at the same time: pandemic, racial tensions and financial crisis. At no other time in history have we been in this perfect storm: something equivalent to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, racial tensions mirror that of...

I had the opportunity to sit in on an executive presentation by Seth Godin. While it was a bit strange to see Seth trying to fit his routine into the email marketing industry, his outlook on solving big and small problems is sound. His way of communicating profound things in small...

I’ll start out this discussion track with a cartoon from Marketoonist Tom Fishburne and a general assumption that machine learning/AI is something you will look at, explore or invest in at some point in 2019.  According to most analysts' reports, this is one of the hottest topics and investment areas for...

Sometimes the best way to share ideas is through dark humor, I expect this will hit a nerve with different people in different ways. Some might say, “OMG- YES”, some may say “WTH? - what are you talking about”, yet the reality is with all the vendor choices and aggressive sales...

(Industry Veteran David Baker delivered one of the three keynote addresses at this years Email Innovations Summit. David had been away from the conference stage for a few years as a result of losing his ability to speak. Using text-to-speech technology, we were honored to invite David back to the stage. Needless to say, he hit it out of the park.I asked him to discuss his experiences in presenting. Thanks, David!)

Consumer digital consumption has changed a ton over recent years. While consumers are Snapchatting on iPhones and shopping on iPads while watching connected TVs, the email experience hasn’t changed a lot, outside of location.  Looking through rose colored glasses tells us the ROI is still significant, and a mainstay for virtually every marketer that has a digital presence, which has led to a consistent, but not that impressive industry growth over the last decade.   The bad news is, it’s not grown proportionate to other advertising channels as a percentage of total marketing spend.

I’ve admired many people in this industry for many years, some with more public backgrounds and contributions than others. But you always wonder what drives these people to be so vocal, what is it that they want to leave an imprint on for our industry and what big things not necessarily tied to the industry that they aspire to do to improve our world.

Have you taken on a new role?  With the average tenure of email marketers at just under those of politicians and CMOs, new leaders and managers need to think about the first 90 days both tactically and strategically.

"The best tips I can give you this holiday season is to spur your creativity with example of past programs that did more than offered shopping experiences. Given it’s less than a month out, it’s still not too late to use your brand as the experience vs. selling products to augment the experience. Not everyone has a power brand like Tiffany’s. "