"Email. It’s “antiquated,” always on the verge of dying and if you ask what the internet thinks of email marketing you will find that 74.9% find it negative. Yet 66% of B2C marketing professionals still maintain that email is the most effective channel to reach and engage customers. Our job as email marketers is to continually drive engagement and grow this high ROI channel. This Valentine’s Day let’s get back to the basics and take a look at nine great best practices we can follow to fall in love with email again."

When looking to China, and in excess of a half billion consumer mailboxes , it is no surprise email marketers will identify substantial opportunity, this should be balanced with the understanding the landscape is very different to anywhere else in the world.  It is certainly not a simple matter of transferring your experience gained in North America, Europe or even Asia-Pacific and applying that to the mainland Chinese market.

Marketing in China offers several opportunities. The overall market huge and wealth is on the rise – two factors that are especially attractive to international companies. That said, marketing in China can differ significantly from marketing in the U.S. as well as many other Western countries. Email marketing, in particular, offers specific challenges not common in the rest of the world.

I’ve been lucky in my career – I’ve been brought in three different times to turn around and/or grow an email program. Two were (and are) rousing successes. Let’s just call the other one... a valuable test.

"Here’s what’s on the 2015 “to-do” list of these top marketers, and should probably be on yours as well."

The practice of marketing has long searched for the ideal, one-to-one, marketer-customer communication channel – one that would allow two-way conversations and deliver masses of critical customer information back to the marketer. For marketers everywhere, this would be the marketing “Holy Grail.”

How to Maintain Consumer Confidence and Trust When Selecting a Mobile Program Provider.

Vendors that focus on the acquisition of email addresses have been shamed for too long. Admittedly, the email acquisition space is rife with vendors of ill repute, and plenty of people have lined their pockets with the money of marketers hoping for a quick way to grow their prospect databases. This does not mean, however, that ALL acquisition vendors or all email acquisition practices are bad!

Last year was a big “rethink” year for email, after clawing its way back into the limelight as the reigning champion of digital marketing. Mobile email penetration peaked in 2013 igniting marketers’ need to gain insight on how this growth was influencing their email programs. Inbox Marketer’s behavioural email data showed major shifts in device usage and consumption patterns, underscoring the need for new strategies in the design and development of mobile optimized email.

Last week I had the opportunity to speak at an Atlanta Interactive Marketing (AiMA) event on must-have marketing automation tools. Marketing is about getting the attention ofthe people who matter most to your business, and what makes it possible to reach these people is the data we have about them. No matter how you compile it, the data you have about customers is what drives your automation. What I wanted to share at this event was that, regardless of which automation platform you use and which processes you have in place, your automation efforts will never be as effective as they could be if you’re not automating the data that drives these processes. Marketing automation isn’t complete without data automation.

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the letters “RFP”? Chances are it isn’t something good—unless, of course, you work at The Relevancy Group. We love RFPs and helping our clients manage the process and get great deals. But for the rest of the email world on both the buy side and the sell side these three letters come with a lot of baggage. Why is that?

It’s holiday email season! Right about now is when I start having a hard time managing my personal email – there are quite a few brands in my inbox and while I really do want email from the companies I enjoy, the volume is at times unmanageable and causes me frustration. I know my family and friends feel the same way. How can marketers make sure they are maintaining their brand reputation and inbox placement, while at the same time sending what’s needed to help companies reach their holiday goals? Here are some reminders on how to send smart email and maintain a good sending reputation that will carry you into the New Year.

If email isn’t your number one priority, it’s time to shift gears and focus solely on email.

Spamtraps are considered by many as the gold standard in proving that someone is a spammer. Secret emails/honeypots/blackholes are the canary in the email coal mine- heretofore absolute proof that you’re a bad actor in the war against spam. We’ve all been taught to believe that spam traps can only end up on your list if you’re mailing old/dead addresses and/or purchasing lists.

Getting customers to opt-in to email communications is a priority for many companies as a means to increase revenue. However, email also serves its purpose as a fantastic cost reduction mechanism when converting customers to go paperless. Now, companies are looking for ways to get their customers to convert from paper bills to eBilling. What better way to do that, than to send email bills instead? In this blog post, we’ll focus on getting consent via email, to maximize customer take up of email as a billing channel.

I love "what if" games, don't you?  Recently, in a group to which I belong, this question was posed:  What if the boss gave you $10,000 to improve your brand's email marketing ROI?

There may come a time in your career as an email marketer where you’ll be presented with a (legitimate) list that you need to integrate into your database; for example, your company could make an acquisition or you could be taking over marketing activities from another business unit. FierceMarkets has had a flurry of these kind of activities in the last 18 months, and we’ve developed a plan that has been successful so far. I’ll share the main points here to help with any integrations you may face.

As email marketing experts, we all know that if the present and future direction of email marketing could be summed up in one word, it would be personalization.

The proliferation of SaaS solutions into the massive and ever-growing cloud ecosystem has been godsend for digital marketers for more than 15 years. The days of expensive, IT intensive, on-premise solutions are largely a thing of the past. However, all the benefits of cloud solutions have not come without a significant...

We’re almost there; Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and every other day from Thanksgiving to Christmas will fill up with online shoppers looking for those special gifts. Online businesses will ramp up marketing efforts and website optimization to capture all they can from floods of consumers scouring their inventories. Big and small companies, alike, will be looking for the advantage that makes them stand out this holiday season.