• Your Newest Challenge: Mastering The Small Screen
    Thank you, Steve Jobs, for giving me the perfect news peg for my Email Insider column this week. With the unveiling on Jan. 27 of the iPad, Apple introduces yet another game-changing (in my humble opinion) portable device and platform that will both challenge email marketers and make their jobs a little easier as well.
  • Email Campaigns Bloom With Social Media
    Pepsi recently became one of the first companies to pull its Super Bowl ad spend and redirect it to social media. Breaking a 23-year tradition, Pepsi instead will invest in a social media campaign called the "Pepsi Refresh Project." Reading news like this, it's easy to think that social media is choking off all marketing efforts. Truth is, for email marketers, social media is one of the most useful tools available to make campaigns bloom with more targeted, relevant and successful emails.
  • How Did I Get Here? Let's Talk Landing Pages
    Whether you send your subscriber to a customized landing page, a search result page or a single product page, it's extremely important to think strategically about what the customer is hoping to find and how you can best deliver that experience. Merchandising a landing page should follow the same organizing philosophy that you would apply to the selling floor in a brick-and-mortar store.
  • Hierarchy Of Optimization
    As Abraham Lincoln said, "I walk slowly, but I don't walk backwards." We've made amazing strides in the email and marketing automation space with regard to our strategic thinking, technology advances and how we link disparate technologies to solve problems -- but have organizations followed our lead? Looking back over the years, I find there is a natural progression to how people use email and the relative complexity of implementing ideas and the costs/risks and ROI of these activities
  • The Email Humanitarian Effort
    What happened in Haiti is devastating on so many levels, and you can't venture far from your favorite media channel without hearing updates and news. Generosity and support are pouring in around the world, and some email marketers are using their email marketing communications for this humanitarian effort. Kudos to you for recognizing that every email you send doesn't have to include a coupon or a discount. Sometimes, more brand equity can be derived from what you do and how you leverage your marketing spend during these times.
  • Why 2010 Could Be A Bad Year For 'Worst-Practice' Marketers
    As business-as-usual resumes after the holiday break, my firm has resumed its regular check-ins with our ISP partners. An interesting trend is appearing. We're not hearing it everywhere, but enough that it's worth reporting. The new, biggest problem for ISP subscribers appears to be "worst-practice" email coming from legitimate companies.
  • Signs Your Email Program Is Behind The Curve
    Email marketing's high return on investment often breeds complacency -- and is often pointed to as both a blessing and curse. After all, why invest more in analytics, segmentation, and testing when the profits are already rolling in quite nicely? I'll tell you why.
  • Your Customer Is More Than An @ Sign
    When I go with the flow and throw out the proverbial "we want to develop a dialogue with the customer," is it really a dialogue I mean? Are we really communicating with the customer -- or just throwing spaghetti against the wall hoping it sticks?
  • Your Email Pantry: Does The Sauce Need Moroccan Coriander, Or Just Salt?
    My wife and I, we cook. But my wife does more than just cook. She is a Cook. Her palette is far more refined; she has a deeper inventory of experiences, techniques and knowledge to draw on. We were working up a sauce recently. She lifted a spoonful to her mouth, sipped it, and then chewed the liquid thoughtfully, almost as if she were tasting a complex wine. "What does this need?" she asked as she offered me a spoonful. I tasted and found the sauce vaguely lacking. But absent her pantry, I could only offer feebly, "Um, it needs …
  • What Should the Email Industry Talk About In 2010?
    As we launch into 2010, I'd like to break away from the usual round of predictions and must-do lists. Let's talk instead about what we need to do in order to help advance the industry in this decade.
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