Today we are going to unbox the email technology company that, without a doubt, has the coolest name: Email On Acid.

Founded by web programmer John Thies and designer Michelle Klann in 2009, Email On Acid (based in Denver) is primarlily an email visualation tool but also has analytics capability and provides tools to increase inbox delivery and help blocked images render properly in the email client. 

Email marketing programs – and the people who run them – are often among the single most profitable programs (and people) in an organization. The efforts they make to increase the stickiness of client relationships can add millions of dollars of marginal revenue to an organization.

Yet, when I find out that a new CMO or SVP of marketing has been added to a company, there is usually one glaring connection between nearly all of them…

They’re not email marketers.

Welcome to a new series from Only Influencers called "Unboxing: Email". Each "Unboxing" article will examine the latest Email Innovations, and walk you through each tool from login to results. 

We kick off the series this week with a deep dive into AlchemyWorx's Touchstone product which is subtitled "Subject Line Gold". Touchstone, as the subtitle suggests, is an A/B Subject Line Testing tool.

Greetings Influencers! I’m incredibly excited to announce my return to the Influencers, and the industry at large with the launch of Lift Science, an agency focusing on digital marketing strategy, analytics and tech integrations.

Our goal is to make data science more fun and approachable, and to help brands build truly groundbreaking, next-generation integrated marketing automation solutions on top of their digital infrastructure. There have never been more powerful tools or computational power available to marketers than we have today, but there’s a huge gap in the industry when it comes to connecting these incredible solutions in a seamless manner to effectively use their advanced features. If you’re looking to connect your company’s product recommendation engine or offer decisioning system to send real time messages through your ESP, we can help.

"The reaction to, and response of, an email message has the same power to conjure up an emotional response as does the spoken word, and the response or behavior we influence is the action, or lack-there-of, seen in our customers. But how do you know what to say to create this emotional reaction, specifically in your email marketing communications?"

After a consumer opts into receiving your emails, I assume they’ll be somewhat active. During the initial weeks they’ll open, click, browse your website, and maybe even convert. However, it probably won’t take long for them to lose interest. They’ll delete without pause or filter into a subfolder for a rainy day. They may come back briefly when a compelling event motivates them to find your most recent offer or a reactivation campaign lures them in once again, but the pattern will repeat itself. They’ll get bored and disengage all over again.

LiveIntent works with 450 brands and 750 publishers to deliver marketing to 92MM people, not pixels, every month. This week, we announced a partnership with Salesforce Active Audiences.

"You probably know by now that segmentation improves email marketing performance significantly, so if you’re still operating primarily in “batch and blast” mode it’s time to start slicing and dicing your subscriber file. Marketers that practice list segmentation see better open and click-through rates, fewer unsubscribes and better deliverability."

Batch and Blast – the process of sending out email with little to no segmentation – has become the Tom Cruise of the email industry. Once white-hot popular, yet now almost comically reviled. You can’t pick up an entertainment magazine without a little Cruise-hate. You can’t pick up a marketing publication that doesn’t attempt to eviscerate BB and basically tell you that you’re a moron if you use it.

Last week, organic grocery giant Whole Foods announced its plans to open a low-cost grocery chain targeted at the millennial market. The concept, according to CEO Walter Robb, will be “unlike anything that currently exists in the marketplace,” boasting “a modern, streamlined design, innovative technology and a curated section.” In the same week, McDonald’s—in an attempt to boost its falling popularity with the twenty-something set, revived its Hamburglar mascot complete with a head-to-toe hipster makeover. With two major players joining the race to capture (and retain) their share of the millennial market, media outlets and marketing professionals alike have called into question the efficacy of their tactics. Why the skepticism? All too often companies miss the mark when it comes to millennial marketing, due in large part to the mass confusion surrounding how to engage this elusive yet highly influential group.

It’s your first week as an email marketer.

Then you blink and a whole year has flown by. It happened to me, and it’s probably going to happen to you. After a year of email marketing, you certainly haven’t learned everything there is to know, but you do discover some pretty eye-opening lessons.

"It is almost ridiculous how much money you can save by being a self-sender. At Zeeto, our ROI has doubled since we went down the path of self-sending – even though we have experienced each and every one of the cons outlined"

"To not have an email address is the digital equivalent of being homeless. Without an email address, you cannot shop online, bank online or engage with social media."

58% of people said they abandon because shipping costs increased the price too much. 57% said they wanted to get an idea of the price including shipping. 55% said they weren’t ready to purchase and wanted to save the basket for later! 50% said their order didn’t qualify for free shipping and 37% complained shipping costs were shown too late in the process.

"Lately there’s been a lot of talk about the power struggles between the teams traditionally responsible for information technology and those responsible for marketing. Heidrick & Struggles sums up the collision of these two functions very well."

"Personalization is under attack. Not the act of personalizing messages to be more relevant and valuable – just the word itself. A recent Buzzfeed article reports that brands like Walmart, Macys and Gap are eschewing the term "personalization" in favor of "relevancy." Why? There are a couple of reasons. First, with the amount of contextually relevant data now available to marketers, the term personalization seems dated, limited and even "invasive and robotic," according to the article. Second, brands are very aware of not crossing the line between relevant and creepy. "

Ever since the final session at EEC 2015, it’s been a seismic few weeks for the email community when it comes to understanding deliverability from the perspective of the inbox providers. In that session, a seemingly innocuous question from yours truly turned what would have been a worthy, but predictable panel on deliverability featuring 4 major inbox providers (AOL, Comcast, Gmail and Outlook.com) into one of the most controversial and talked about panels in the history of the EEC.

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of joining many of my fellow Influencers in Miami at the Email Evolution Conference. Hosted annually by the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council (eec), the event kicks off the email conference year by bringing brands, advocates, vendors and thought leaders together under the south Florida sun to discuss, debate and share innovations and pressing issues central to email marketing.

"I am 6 months into my new job and new role as Marketing Director at WorkCompass, A B2B SaaS firm selling Performance management and appraisal software. I am the first marketing hire coming fast on the heels of the first sales hire Colm. So what’s the perfect pitch for our audience? I had no idea!"

“Words matter very much Ms. Barnes, you should care more about them given your profession.”- Francis Underwood (Kevin Spacey of House of Cards)

In the profession of digital marketing, our words matter very much. Words are the pinnacle point of persuasion that drive our consumers to either take an action or ignore our advances. Therefore, our pitches, or messages, warrant much more attention and affection than currently rewarded to them.