- A Wishbone, A Backbone, A Funny Bone in
Email Marketing Daily on
08/24/2017
According to the National Retail Federation, 40% of consumers will start their shopping before Halloween. That's just over 70 days from now, which means you probably have your marketer hat on and
have already begun thinking about, and likely planning, your holiday messaging and promotional strategies.
- Email Journey Useful -- But Only Up To A Point in
Email Marketing Daily on
06/13/2017
Two thousand years ago Laozi wrote, "A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." Not that Laozi, the founder of Taoism, was offering travel advice. Like all philosophers, his
words drive at a universal truth: the importance of keeping an open mind.The operative word is fixed, because Laozi doubtless understood that all human endeavors depend on planning, and all plans
inevitably collapse in the face of execution. Laozi would have made a hell of an email marketer.
- Everything You Wanted To Know About Intelligent Messaging -- But Were Afraid To Ask in
Email Insider on
05/16/2017
I believe the world will change and all messaging will become intelligent, adapting to behaviors observed and expressed, controlled by consumer preference versus Pavlovian style promotional windows. I
also believe the world will become more transactional in nature (think interaction management versus promotional messaging).
- Great Email Experiences Require New Thinking in
Email Insider on
05/01/2017
The other day, a friend sent an email saying she had declared email bankruptcy. With one mighty click and a mass email explanation, she accomplished the unthinkable: deleting all messages in order to
begin anew at inbox zero. The irony wasn't lost on my overcrowded inbox, but when I received her message, the email marketer inside of me gulped. How many relevant offers - offers my friend actually
wanted to engage with - had just been obliterated?
- Words Matter -- Even In Ransom Notes in
Email Insider on
04/03/2017
I like to think that kidnappers A/B test their ransom notes. For one thing, there's money on the line. Also, the tedious process of cutting and pasting letters from various periodicals into a ransom
note gives kidnappers plenty of opportunity to think carefully about the words they want to use. With ransom notes, the message is everything, and the design serves only to conceal the sender's
identity.
- Optimizing Experiences For The Connected Consumer in
Email Insider on
03/13/2017
We are all connected - whether connected means you have panic attacks if you leave home without your mobile phone, or you feel empty sitting on the couch without your iPad within arm's reach. We are
entering an age when knowing who your customers are and their activities is not enough to succeed. It's no longer sufficient to know which devices they use and simply call it a day. Even knowing
where they use their devices is not enough to deliver truly relevant customer experiences. All of these data points must now be combined through event data and points-in-time references to be
actionable.
- How to Move Machine Learning From Possibility To Practice in
Email Insider on
02/21/2017
Imagine a world with no spell check -- then suddenly hearing someone say that there were tools available to autocorrect all your spelling in any language on the fly. "Blasphemy!" people might cry,
until they tried it. Marketers today might think the same thing if you tell them that machine learning can improve their email campaigns.
- Data Doesn't Lie -- People Do in
Email Insider on
02/06/2017
I've been reading a variety of 2016 benchmark trends. Things seem to be trending well for inbox delivery and engagement for email, but I'm so unimpressed with the analysis that typically comes with
it.
- When Personalization Doesn't Work in
Email Insider on
01/09/2017
We should all remember, there is a fine line between marketing brilliance - and having to walk into your boss's office and explain a poor customer digital experience that went viral. Sometimes the
problem could be a personalization attempt that went awry.
- Not Everyone Is Your Customer in
Email Insider on
12/19/2016
As we near the end of 2016, I spent time reflecting on topics I wrote about this year, with a couple of simple conclusions: Your inspiration is contextual to what's happening now, but without a
well-thought-out plan, you will never scale your ideas.