"Each of these titans has been aggressively building and buying their way to deliver on the promise of a CMO-focused, cloud-based, integrated cross-channel platform that places the digital marketing controls squarely in the court of the marketing organization and relieving long-standing resource dependencies on other internal and external organizations. It is a vision that, in most of these and many other competing organizations, has been branded the “Marketing Cloud,” and it is set to be the key driver in marketing technology evolution and decision-making for the coming five years."

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"Change is a process. It takes time to simplify, build trust and grow an efficient, centralized organization. Some people and regions are more accepting of change than others. Continue to have respectful conversations with transparency of information, track the data, and keep the priority business goals in mind as you all drive forward together."

"Epsilon released its Q4 2013 Email Trends and Benchmarks Report earlier this month and there’s some exciting new data here on triggered messages that will help marketers evaluate their email programs." Epsilon released its Q4 2013 Email Trends and Benchmarks Report earlier this month and there’s some exciting new data here...

"I call bullshit. Because - in email- relevance is irrelevant, once the consumer chooses you. (Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth music.) Why do I know this? Statistics."

"Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the technical term for strategically planning your tests. It’s the active process of defining the metric you’re trying to optimize, creating several hypotheses about what tweaks in your campaigns may increase your conversion rate, and measuring the effect of each hypothesis. It applies equally to email and landing pages, but I’ll limit the discussion here to email as much as possible."

"Where are the big opportunities for email innovation over the next several years? My bet is on the Inbox."

"Email Marketing in South Africa is truly in it's infancy. There are few true ESP's in South Africa, and very few companies truly using Email Marketing to it's full potential."

"If you’re a marketer, you’ve no doubt heard about the 80/20 rule. For those of you who haven’t, it’s simple: 80 percent of your revenue comes from 20 percent of your customer base.If that is indeed the rule, it means the vast majority of your business is coming from repeat customers....

"Serious buyers will ask a lot of questions on a number of topics. They include service, implementation, integration, support, product roadmap, financial information on the vendor, timelines for contract negotiations and other elements that are necessary to make a move. Aside from asking a lot of questions, serious buyers tend to involve more people from their organizations to gain exposure to the platforms. As you work to understand how you may be getting scored by your vendor;"

"And what's the process for controlling email marketers and taking away the power of the channel? It's easy. Call them a spammer."

"Many companies use cause-related marketing to boost their brand image, build goodwill and create positive PR. This is widely apparent at holiday time and during October, for example, as businesses jump on the breast cancer awareness bandwagon."

"The body of knowledge on best practices for email creative has grown exponentially in the time since I started working in online in the late 1980's at Compuserve. Today there are dozens of resources for traditional and cutting edge best practices in email creative. Here are some of my favorites:"

"When your organization goes through change, it means you have to re-align your business leaders, your teams, your vendors and sometimes, your customers. What steps can you take to get back on track once you realize you are not aligned? "

"Personalization is touted in email circles as a positive. I tell clients all the time that including a recipient's first name and other personal details in a message has been shown to increase engagement. But there are times when personalization can be creepy."

"What do you want to accomplish this year in your email program? Sounds simple right? "

In this journey, many of us have had a lot of different jobs and worn different hats. I've had more than most. Recently I made a list of all the jobs I've had. Believe or not, here it is: I worked as a Sprout Farmer. I have been a grave digger...

"The question is, if everyone wants to test, then why isn’t everyone testing? The answer is that testing is simple in concept but really, really hard to execute. But not for the reasons you think."

"Marketers, service providers and app developers alike must protect their data no matter where it resides. This includes holding service providers accountable by demanding they adopt the best practices available."

As we start a new year, let's take a look at Christmas emails past. The 2013 holiday season was filled with promotional emails galore. Here are a few that caught my attention.