Last week I had the opportunity to speak at an Atlanta Interactive Marketing (AiMA) event on must-have marketing automation tools. Marketing is about getting the attention ofthe people who matter most to your business, and what makes it possible to reach these people is the data we have about them. No matter how you compile it, the data you have about customers is what drives your automation. What I wanted to share at this event was that, regardless of which automation platform you use and which processes you have in place, your automation efforts will never be as effective as they could be if you’re not automating the data that drives these processes. Marketing automation isn’t complete without data automation.

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the letters “RFP”? Chances are it isn’t something good—unless, of course, you work at The Relevancy Group. We love RFPs and helping our clients manage the process and get great deals. But for the rest of the email world on both the buy side and the sell side these three letters come with a lot of baggage. Why is that?

It’s holiday email season! Right about now is when I start having a hard time managing my personal email – there are quite a few brands in my inbox and while I really do want email from the companies I enjoy, the volume is at times unmanageable and causes me frustration. I know my family and friends feel the same way. How can marketers make sure they are maintaining their brand reputation and inbox placement, while at the same time sending what’s needed to help companies reach their holiday goals? Here are some reminders on how to send smart email and maintain a good sending reputation that will carry you into the New Year.

If email isn’t your number one priority, it’s time to shift gears and focus solely on email.

Spamtraps are considered by many as the gold standard in proving that someone is a spammer. Secret emails/honeypots/blackholes are the canary in the email coal mine- heretofore absolute proof that you’re a bad actor in the war against spam. We’ve all been taught to believe that spam traps can only end up on your list if you’re mailing old/dead addresses and/or purchasing lists.

Getting customers to opt-in to email communications is a priority for many companies as a means to increase revenue. However, email also serves its purpose as a fantastic cost reduction mechanism when converting customers to go paperless. Now, companies are looking for ways to get their customers to convert from paper bills to eBilling. What better way to do that, than to send email bills instead? In this blog post, we’ll focus on getting consent via email, to maximize customer take up of email as a billing channel.

I love "what if" games, don't you?  Recently, in a group to which I belong, this question was posed:  What if the boss gave you $10,000 to improve your brand's email marketing ROI?

There may come a time in your career as an email marketer where you’ll be presented with a (legitimate) list that you need to integrate into your database; for example, your company could make an acquisition or you could be taking over marketing activities from another business unit. FierceMarkets has had a flurry of these kind of activities in the last 18 months, and we’ve developed a plan that has been successful so far. I’ll share the main points here to help with any integrations you may face.

As email marketing experts, we all know that if the present and future direction of email marketing could be summed up in one word, it would be personalization.

The proliferation of SaaS solutions into the massive and ever-growing cloud ecosystem has been godsend for digital marketers for more than 15 years. The days of expensive, IT intensive, on-premise solutions are largely a thing of the past. However, all the benefits of cloud solutions have not come without a significant...

We’re almost there; Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and every other day from Thanksgiving to Christmas will fill up with online shoppers looking for those special gifts. Online businesses will ramp up marketing efforts and website optimization to capture all they can from floods of consumers scouring their inventories. Big and small companies, alike, will be looking for the advantage that makes them stand out this holiday season.

"Browse abandonment emails are straightforward, focused, real-time emails to offer help and call shoppers back. They are different from newsletters, and marketing brochures, and other types of abandonment emails."

The demands and expectations to boost sales during the holiday season are inevitable. Whether your business is retail, publishing, media, entertainment or any online marketing effort involving targeting and sending email, this year’s sales goals are likely higher than last holiday season. As email marketers, we all face the same pressure from our organizations to send more email and drive more traffic.

Suddenly September is here, Fall is closing in, and Holiday 2014 is right around the corner. As of today, there are 85 days left until Black Friday, the official kickoff to the holiday season. If you’re not planning out your holiday strategy now, you could quickly get behind. Yes I know I’m preaching to the choir but this season comes around once a year, and there are some new email tricks you can use to drive success in 2014.

"One of the joys in being a digital/email marketer is that you don’t have to rely on opinion. You can simply run some numbers and decide for yourself."

Recently fellow influencer Bob Frady talked about “Why CASL is Bad Law“ and one that really isn’t going to stop spam.  Canada ranks as the number 7 global source for spam, producing about 4% of all the spam tracked in the world according to SpamRankings.net. While this pales in comparison to the 38.9% of Global Spam originating from the United States, it is still a major problem and represents a significant threat to consumer privacy.

There are dozens of sources, methods, and tactics to grow your email subscriber list, and we all know that not all of them are equally effective. Marketers have vague notions that organic list growth is best and paid acquisition of sources may yield lower quality subscribers, but there is little data available that gets at the validity of that assumption. I pulled some data from my own subscriber list to help throw some hard data into the mix.

"While CASL seems well intended (What? You like spam so much that you won’t try to stop it? You must be a spammer!!!!) it’s a lousy piece of legislation. It’s akin to trying to kill a fly with a hammer. CASL is bad legislation for three simple reasons –"

For many of us in the email marketing profession, customer interaction equals B2C. Tens of billions of marketing emails are sent every day – to consumers. “Buy This!” “Check Out This Incredible Offer!” “Download the Last XYZ You’ll Ever Need!” … the thrust of most email campaigns is planned, designed, targeted, segmented, analyzed, measured, filtered, and executed with one purpose: drive consumers to a website and convince them to take action. So goes the eCommerce engine. And it works.

"When it comes to B2B email strategies, here’s 9 things that B2B marketers need to consider when preparing content for their campaigns."