The simple answer is that it should be both. But there is sometimes a gap between that combined vision and how marketers practice email marketing. Because of short-term business pressures, or simply a lack of understanding, many marketers prioritize sales over relationship-building. They assume that, or at least act as if,...

Much of my career has been devoted to the exploration of personalization. Searching for answers to one essential question: How we make our content, our marketing, our service, and our products more relevant and more personal? Twenty or so years ago, about midway in my career, I published a book on...

Most of us marketers consider unsubcribes a fact of life in email. We all-too-often take them for granted. They are considered the unavoidable collateral damage that each passing campaign creates. But what if they were a missed opportunity to learn how our sending behavior may be impacting our effectiveness? We set...

There has been a lot of interest and discussion in the OI-verse about the value of newsletters as an email communication channel. Advantages range from relationship-building to providing more in-depth and relevant content. In parallel, there has also been a lot of discussion on the importance of first-party data in a...

Let me be candid with you Influencers. Sometimes, we screw up! Actually, more often than we’d like, and more often than we realize. Not always of our own doing, mind you. Often circumstances beyond our control gently nudge us in the wrong direction, away from the straight and oh-so-narrow path to...

We’ve noted an increase interest in Gifs recently, presumable because they are now supported by virtually all email clients and even (gasp!) Outlook. Animated GIFS are known to increase reader attention and help to improve the email experience as well as support key messaging. These short meme-like animations can quickly catch...

As a new year begins, I thought it timely to take a somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at some of the challenges that a full-on omni-channel strategy can pose to an already robust and successful email marketing/CRM program. These challenges flow from two opposing forces that exist in contemporary marketing. Each has an...

We all know that consumers expect and demand a more personalized customer experience. They want emails that are relevant to their interests, needs and aspirations. The challenge is that the data required to personalize is often missing or incomplete. So, what can we do to backfill missing data to make our...

We often think about customer journey as a series of touchpoints and device interactions. The customer opens an email, visits a website, or opens a mobile app. But it is often more meaningful and far more rewarding to examine and understand the customers’ state of mind as they progress through the...

You’re not getting the readership you hoped for? Your open rates and click-throughs are generally poor. And you’re wondering what’s wrong? Read on to learn why.  Assuming that you don’t have an inbox-placement issue, your customers aren’t reading your emails because:  Your copy doesn’t provide valuable content – Yes, there are...

Is it just me, or does it feel like a hoard of lawyers has invaded the inbox? I can’t even count the number of email messages from CEOs I never heard from telling me how important the wellbeing of their employees and their customers is. Or how they are now taking...