The 2024 Forrester Email Service Provider (ESP) Wave™ finally dropped today, August 5, and as usual, it’s filled with a mix of great insights, missing vendors, and “what were they thinking?” conclusions. As most of you know, for the last 9 years, my business has exclusively focused on helping enterprise brands...

Almost everybody in the email world has gone through a technology platform migration. But few share my perspective as a tech user, platform vendor, and now head of an agency that shepherds enterprise-level companies through the migration maze. Today's technology can do things I couldn't even dream of when I started...

Jim Barksdale, co-founder of Netscape, is credited with saying ‘there are only two ways to make money in business. One is by bundling. The other is by unbundling.’  That casual-sounding insight is like a high-powered X-ray view for the changing fortunes of businesses — especially, it seems, digital businesses.  You could...

The recent advancements in AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney have left many of us overwhelmed. It's no secret that even email providers such as Gmail have utilized AI for some time with their email filtering algorithms. This has led to discussions and articles about the future use of AI in...

As third-party cookies are scheduled to disappear, it is becoming more important to collect zero-party and first-party data to improve automation and personalization in your campaigns. Your ESP can be the best place to gather this first-hand data, as I explained in an earlier OI post (Zero/First Party Data and your...

Any discussion of the features and functionality of ESPs vs. CDPs needs to start with the ESP platforms. ESPs have been around in one form or another for over 20 years, and it should be well-estalbished these days as to what constitutes an ESP. Ah, if only it were so easy....

Every once in a while, during our careers, we get to do something truly exciting. Launch a new product. Solve a business problem in a novel way. Build a new system. On rare occasions, we get to do all these things at once. This is one of those stories. These situations...

Had a question posed to me by a colleague today asking who out there was the first ESP in the space. I seem to remember the topic coming up a little while ago on the list...but just wondering if anyone had a history of ESPs coming to market...Thanks,