“It depends; you should test that” has to be the most frequently used answer to any email marketing question.

And it’s not entirely unreasonable. What’s right for one for one brand isn’t for another.

October 27^th, 1994: Display ads make an appearance on this digital rag with the moniker Wired.com with a boffo a click-through rate of 44%.

Are you making what you should? Download the 2016 Only Influencers Email Marketing Salary Guide.

Below are some of jus the latest email innovations released last week: 

Ray Tomlinson, the man that chose the @ symbol that turned electronic mail from a mass message board to an addressable identity, passed away last week at the age of 74. That’s why this week, Only Influencer’s partner LiveIntent is taking a moment to explore the impact of that @ symbol, all it makes possible, and say ‘Thanks.’

"Machine learning" has moved out of science fiction and into real-life applications, like powering Tesla cars that run on autopilot and robots that can beat humans at the Japanese game of Go. For marketers, it gets them closer to their email nirvana: true 1:1 personalization on a mass scale. Machine learning,...

Selling chocolate eggs to the general public at Easter isn’t exactly selling ice to the Eskimos. However, for the businesses who don’t have this delicious advantage, there are other ways of creating effective and fun campaigns to leverage this annual marketing opportunity. Fresh Relevance has collected a few great examples of chocolate-free brands who’ve been creative with their marketing in the last few years.

According to Ad Exchanger's Sarah Sluis, while marketers remain optimistic about Atlas's ability to live up to the hype, the honest review of its abilities thus far have been a resounding meh.

Hillary. Bernie Trump. Rubio. For almost every Commander-in-Chief-in-Waiting, there is an ancient, unseen force powering their campaigns and driving their digital fundraising efforts: Email. But what makes email such a political tour de force?

This week, Only Influencer’s partner LiveIntent dives deep into why so many presidential candidates are stumping for email.

Many companies struggle with measuring the impact of email on their organizations. As a result, it’s consistently undervalued as a tool in most marketers’ arsenals. As marketers, one of the most effective ways of showcasing the true benefits of a strategic email marketing campaign is to measure and understand the effects of an email, even when there was no open or click – what we call the halo effect.

I’m starting to cringe every time I hear the phrase, “We could segment our audience based on that data”.

People hear that phrase and eyes light up and heads bob in agreement. In meetings with the CMO/SVP, the phrase is carefully proffered as a goal about to be fulfilled, and the CMO/SVP solemnly nods and pats everyone on the back for having done a good job.

What utterly useless, well-intentioned bunk.

Here are last week's Email Innovations: 

It’s a tale as old as time. You spend all this time crafting the perfect email campaign for that perfect customer segment, only to see a 17% open rate – meaning that 83% of your best customers are missing out on your best offers!

Email Innovators were busy in 2015. Here is a list of the new products and services that were introduced into the market last year:

The 3Q 2015 Email Trends and Benchmark Report was released by Epsilon earlier this month. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth taking a look at – reading it 3 things struck me.

One of the most important new technologies to evolve in the past year are Identity Graphs – because they don’t just increase our ability to reach customers across devices, they increase our overall understanding of who these customers are and our ability to market to them.

Elliot Ross, Action Rocket:  "We’ve been adding lots of new features to our email CMS Taxi for Email – This week we’ve made our pricing plans more accessible for all email teams, so they can make email campaigns faster and improve their email workflow. Our Essential plan starts at $62.50/mo (paid annually)...

According to a study done by the IAB, “Internet time” is divided fairly evenly among multiple devices, creating a major problem for marketers who have been relying on cookies to aggregate and target online audiences. So the question becomes, “How do you reliably target audiences across multiple devices when cookies don’t work?’”

This week, Only Influencer’s partner, LiveIntent, sets out to answer that question by explaining the two solutions that have emerged as the frontrunners for targeting customers across devices - Probabilistic Models and Deterministic IDs – and why neither is quite good enough.

Today we launch a new Only Influencer's feature where we "unbox" the email marketing programs of top brands around the world. Today we will be exploring the email programs of ServiceMaster®, a leading provider of residential and commercial services. Their brands include ServiceMaster Restore (disaster restoration), ServiceMaster Clean (janitorial), Merry Maids (residential cleaning), Terminix (termite and pest control), Furniture Medic (furniture repair), American Home Shield (home warranties), and AmeriSpec (home inspections).

January 2016 marks the beginning of Only Influencers' 6th year! We are hoping to make it our best year yet, and I'm excited by many of the new initiatives we have planned. For this first post of 2016, I want to share with you my plans for the future and also ask for your help to make OI even more responsive to your needs as an Email Marketing Professional.