• What I Learned About Email From My 91-Year-Old Uncle
    My great uncle is 91 years old. He recently moved into assisted living (he needs a little more help these days then the family can support), and so we have been going through all of his things. In all of the mess, we did discover something that I found very interesting: V-Mail. In WWII my uncle was a Torpedo Man Second Class. And during this time, the government would provide V-Mail, or "Victory Mail" postcards that the enlisted and deployed could use to communicate back home to family and loved ones. His mother kept them, and when he returned home, …
  • Facebook Puts A Price On Permission
    As the latest effort to make email more like postal mail, Facebook's new Paid Messages program is completely fascinating to me. The program, which is in beta, allows individuals to pay $1 to send someone outside of their network a message and have it land in the recipient's inbox instead of the junk-collecting black hole-like "Other" folder.
  • Email-Social Integration: Past, Present and Future
    I have been working to encourage more email marketers to integrate email and social for at least five years (and writing about it since 2009). Where are we now in 2013? The results are all over the board.
  • Optimizing Mobile Email
    Mobile is having a profound impact on how we use email marketing. We are truly in a new world of the three-screen, soon to be four-screen, integrated experiences. With the shift from desktop to laptop to tablet to smartphone, it is becoming more and more important to understand the unique user experience, track and optimize it.
  • Three Content Strategies To Help Consumers Cut Through The Clutter
    We all live in a very connected, busy and noisy world where it's hard to cut through the overwhelming amount of clutter and get to the information we all really want and need. Today's consumer is looking for easier ways to interact with companies and learn relevant information to make decisions about products and services to help simplify their everyday lives. Three ways marketers can make it easier:
  • New Trends And New Norms In 2013
    I can't think of a year that brought more innovation to the inbox than 2012. New ideas about managing email are coming from everywhere -- some from big mailbox providers, like AOL's Alto, but lots from entrepreneurs and developers that just see a new way to experience email. As more and more gain traction in 2013, they have the potential to totally change the email ecosystem in ways that are great for consumers. That doesn't mean they're bad for marketers. Here are a few of the emerging email trends and technologies worth watching -- and more important, planning for -- …
  • In 2013, Email Marketers Will Begin Focusing On Both Positive And Negative Metrics
    Marketers love positive metrics. High engagement rates, click-throughs, conversions -- the better the numbers in these categories, the more likely the execs in the board room will cheer you on. What about negative metrics: immediate opt-outs, spam reports and people that never engage? As we move into 2013, more and more marketers will begin using negative metrics to help boost performance.
  • Using Email To Get the Next Sale, And Beyond
    Email marketing is great for driving first purchases, but it's perhaps an even more awesome marketing channel to get those all-important second, third and fourth sales that turn one-time buyers into loyal repeat customers. Unlike typical post-purchase emails, such as shipping confirmations or product review requests, "reorder" messages focus on generating the next purchase by using cross-sell, up-sell, recommendation and purchase anniversary messaging.
  • Are Email Marketers Outrunning The Bear?
    There is a joke I frequently tell clients and use in presentations as an analogy for email marketing. Like everyone else I've told it to, you've probably heard it before. Please indulge me anyway:
  • Change The Mindset, Not The Channel
    Shiny-object syndrome has been a problem for email marketers almost since day one. We're always looking for that new magic bullet to deliver the best ROI with the least effort. Unfortunately, that desire leads many of us chasing trends instead of formulating effective strategies. Recent studies compiled by eMarketer demonstrate an apparent disconnect between what channels consumers are actually using and what channels marketers seem to be obsessed with.
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