Marketing automation is wonderful. It’s taken so much of the hard work away from marketing departments that it’s tempting to sit back, relax, and let the software run the show.

But let’s not forget that marketing automation isn’t there to replace human marketers. It’s there to enable them. The software can only work with what you give it, and it can only do what you tell it to. So it’s easy to make mistakes!

Here are three of the most common issues to watch out for when using marketing automation:

On rare occasions Only Influencers publishes an article so important to the future of email marketing and its stakeholders that we label it "Must Read". Todays rebuttal, written by Kath Pay and Tim Watson, of a recent CNBC article is one of those rare occasions.

I spend a lot of time speaking at conferences and events, which gives me the opportunity to talk with email marketers across the country. While the cities may change, I often hear a similar refrain: I’m understaffed and undervalued. People in my organization give very little attention to the email program .Every year I am continually tasked with growing lists and the program while budgets remain flat and patience amongst stakeholders wears thin.

It’s so prevalent in the industry that it’s become a running joke. When someone asks what the best, highest, fastest, most impactful tactic or strategy is? We say, “Let’s test it!” Not sure how to show your team that your brilliant idea is the right way to go? Better test it.

RFPs have real consequences for your company, and possibly for your job. Here’s a list of 4 of the most common mistakes we’ve encountered when being be hired to salvage an email RFP.

<Pick up microphone>

In my February blog post for Only Influencers, I asked you, "How strong is the state of our union?" My own answer was ambivalent.

For close to 20 years, the tracking of email marketing engagement metrics has not changed very much. Apart from the standard open and click metrics with variants, marketers rely on engagement metrics that only scratch the surface of what it takes to propel growth within a program. In fact many industry benchmark reports, still use metrics that have been been around for a long time.

(Industry Veteran David Baker delivered one of the three keynote addresses at this years Email Innovations Summit. David had been away from the conference stage for a few years as a result of losing his ability to speak. Using text-to-speech technology, we were honored to invite David back to the stage. Needless to say, he hit it out of the park.I asked him to discuss his experiences in presenting. Thanks, David!)

For as long as marketers have been using email, email subscriber acquisition has been an important element of successful programs. The larger an email list, the greater the revenue opportunity. The more addresses a marketer acquires, the better chance he or she has of bringing on some great new customers.

“My grill station just went down, my bartender is drunker than his patrons, and my hostess just quit mid-shift. Can I call you back tomorrow?”

Many companies now ask for a customer’s phone number as well as the email address at point of sale, shipping, or entry. They use online forms or capture it in person through a pin pad or mobile credit card reader.

If your business collects personal data from people residing in the European Union, regardless of where in the world your business is based, then it’s most likely in progress with an implementation plan to comply with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) that comes into effect on May 25, 2018. If your business falls into the first bucket but hasn’t started yet, then it’s as late as being a 50-mile drive away from its best friend’s wedding that starts in 4 minutes.

Email marketing books are only as good as the authors who write them and for those who implement their recommendations.

How smart are your email segmentation, automation and personalization/customization strategies? Work on these 3 mini case studies, based on projects I’ve done with my clients, to find out.

In light of my last post for the Influencers blog, I thought it good karma to write a systems check post in order to show a fundamental, systematic process for improving the customer experience from hard data - in turn, making email marketing more fun, and definitely more rewarding. Email marketing is a craft; an art form, melding technical precision and emotively-artistic talents. The reward for appreciating this craft is a profitable, interactive email channel. The customer experience is ultimately relational, data or no data, trigger or no trigger - every email needs to relate to the recipient.

After nearly 20 years in the industry, it still astonishes me to find how many email marketers aren't doing everything they can – legally! – to acquire high-quality subscribers.

In today’s Unboxing article we look at Ongage, a seven year old profitable email marketing technology company based in Israel with corporate offices in New York City. Ongage has carved out a very unique niche for themselves in the email technology universe as an independent front end for ESP’s and SMTP’s with their sweet spot being the SMTP/MTA world which often lacks a front end of their own. It also allows you to integrate multiple SMTP’s into a single common interface. Let’s open it up and look under the hood, starting with the list of recommended vendors that Ongage has integrated with: 

Email Marketing continues to prove its value on a regular basis. When a brand sends an Email they know who opened, clicked, purchased, even down to what they purchased. This data helps in developing targeted Email segmentation plans.   Does this mean Email Marketing is easy? If you are doing batch and blast it can appear easy but Email is complex when done right. However, the payoff is worth the effort. Some people believe that Social is easier since in real time you can post content and get instant likes.   But is this really the same thing?

"Interactive email" and "AI” (artificial intelligence) are all the rage in email these days because they offer lots of promise to keep email's future bright. But, they're tops on my list of overhyped trends. So let’s step back for a moment and look at where we are now and where we should go with them in the future.

A few days ago, I posted a link on my Facebook page to a blog post I'd written about an American Airlines year-end recap email. I praised AA for going above and beyond the call of email duty because it used my own data to hyper-personalize the message.

Then, a friend commented on that post, saying, "Does it ever bother you that we've been preaching the same things for the last 10 years?"