2021 top posts: Only Influencers blog

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We are so grateful to the members of the Only Influencers (OI) community who contribute to our blog! They are all amazing, they are all rock stars, tops in the industry. So this ‘best of’ list isn’t really feedback on the authors; it’s about the topics that reached the right people...

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What are your 3 words for 2022?

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What are your 3 words for 2022? Welcome to 2022! I hope this is the year we crawl out of our collective hole, but I usually feel like I’m still the kid in the back seat asking my parents, “Are we there yet?” I'm excited to produce one of the first...

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Should Emails Expire? Yes and No

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Most commercial email that’s sent is never deleted by recipients. Moreover, most commercial email content is only relevant for a fairly short period of time—say, weeks tops for the vast majority of it. As a consequence, mailbox providers currently store and maintain access to a tremendous amount of old and completely...

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Martech and Adtech – Who’s the Daddy?

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I consider genetic sequencing one of the great scientific achievements during my lifetime. Genetic sequencing has helped us better understand ourselves as biological creatures. It has explained many aspects of who we are, why we look like we do, why we behave like we do and what makes each of us...

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From blank box to killer content

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Email planning for an email campaign can often start as a blank box on a send calendar or launch schedule. But how do you ensure that you can put the reader back into the heart of the content? Here we look at 3 proven methods to move from planning to customer-centric...

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How an email audit can put your email program on the right path

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When your email program doesn't deliver the results you expect or help you achieve your marketing goals, where do you look first to fix the problem? You probably don't have a big red warning light on your ESP dashboard alerting you to problems, the way your car warns you about engine...

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Kickstart your email marketing strategy in 2022 and increase your engagement

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The abundance of specific jobs available and lack of enough email marketing talent to fulfil them at the moment, is testament to the revelation within businesses since COVID; email marketing is no longer the workhorse plugging away in the background – it is the core, the beating heart, of any good...

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If A Mouse Clicks in A VM, Will Anyone Measure It?

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  "Imagine, for instance, if you can make sure that any link that is in an email didn’t actually get executed on your local computer but instead got executed in an isolated browser, which was running out at our edge. We have all the components to be able to do that....

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How predictive analytics can help you grow your email program

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If you read my previous Only Influencers posts on analytics for email marketers and finding the right predictive features for your program, you'll discover I'm all about asking questions – specifically, asking the right questions. Asking the right questions helps you figure out what's not working in your email program and...

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4 Tips for Building your 2022 Email Marketing Strategy

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As we speed toward the end of the year (seriously, it’s almost Thanksgiving - how did that happen so fast?), email marketers are focused on two key projects. 1 - Ensuring those all-important holiday season campaigns all go out without a hitch. 2 - Finalizing your 2022 email marketing strategies. While...

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4 Trends Shaping the ESP Vendor Landscape for 2022

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The recent announcement that Cheetah Digital and CM Group (Sailthru, Selligent, Campaign Monitor, etc.) are combining forces is just the latest example of the changes rippling through the ESP vendor landscape over the last several years. In the last 12 months, dating back to November 2020, we have witnessed the following:...

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Email Bombing and How it Affects Individuals and Brands

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Email bombing is a topic rarely discussed in the email industry. However, it’s an issue that affects brands and individuals every day. And, it’s an experience I went through recently with my personal email account. So, what is email bombing? I’ve been in the email space for almost four years now,...

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Do we ask too much of email?

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As much as I’m clearly a fan of the email channel there have been a number of occasions recently where I see clients going to email to solve nearly all the commercial problems in their business. Whatever the problem is, the main action always taken is to send another email or...

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How to apply the 6 principles of persuasion to email marketing

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Back in 1984, Robert Cialdini published a book called “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion”. Today, the book is famous for its exploration of factors that affect the decisions that people make, notably when it comes to sales, marketing, and purchasing. These factors can also be incredibly powerful when utilised within email....

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5 tips for holiday email marketing in our crazy new world

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Here we are in the middle of October. It's hard to believe how fast this year has gone. It seemed as if 2020 was like riding the slow boat to China, and now we're in the thick of holiday email planning again. I dug out an Only Influencers post I wrote...

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Lazy Marketers Ruin Everything

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Gary Vaynerchuk was quoted as saying “marketers ruin everything”, however, I don’t agree with that broad definition. I’m a glass-half-full guy. Let’s preface that with “Lazy”. Lazy Marketers Ruin Everything! Integrity, truth in advertising, authentic brands, and great products are everywhere.  However, so are the lazy marketers who cut corners, hack...

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Don’t guess. Ask. Survey what readers really think of your emails?

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How do you know what the majority of your readers think about your emails after receiving them for a while? Given that the majority of your audience won’t click on an email (a classic success measure) and open rate is diminishing as a measure of engagement, why not simply ask your...

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AMP for Email: Nope

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Will AMP for Email survive the Privacy Wave — consumer awareness, public scrutiny, regulatory action, and changes in the technical landscape around data and control? I think not. Being in email is a bit like driving an old car. You love the thing — admit it — but the big screens...

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Overcome the 3 Challenges to Successful Journey Mapping

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Customer journey mapping helps you understand how your customers interact with your brand and website. But it has another use as well – setting up useful and relevant automated messages. Journey mapping has also proved to be one of the biggest challenges many of my clients face. The whole process needs...

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Apple’s MPP May Drive Email Design Changes that Actually Hurt Customer Engagement

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Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection will have a broad range of effects on email marketers, impacting email analytics, design, deliverability, personalization, and optimization efforts. Sadly, subscribers who enable MPP will receive less relevant emails and more emails than they would have otherwise gotten if marketers could better measure their engagement through opens....

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