As you head into the frenzy of the holiday email-marketing season, take a minute to step back and appreciate email's great strength as the original disruptive marketing channel.

Email, in fact, is enjoying a renaissance! Those of us who have made email the center of our work lives can rightly feel vindicated when study after study shows people prefer email for brand communications. As shown below from Econsultancy’s Email Marketing Census 2016, the ROI still outshines every other channel from print to broadcast to direct and social.

Some of the most effective email marketing campaigns are actually based on very simple ideas. Here’s a campaign that took very little effort but generated nearly $0.75 per email – along with the 5 simple ideas behind the program.

The way we test today only works with batch and blast

In the last few years digital marketing has been transformed. Marketers have moved from sending the same message to everybody on the list – batch and blast, to segmentation, where messages are specific to particular customer segments or persona’s. According to the 2016 Econsultancy Email Industry Census the majority of respondents claim to be doing basic segmentation while around 1/3 claim to be doing advanced segmentation.

It is that time of year again. The week before the Labor Day weekend when Email Marketers are away on vacation, clinging to their last grasp of summer, and all my blog writers are laying on the beach sipping My Ties. So every year, it is my turn to take the blogger reins and talk about my thoughts and dreams about where Only Influencers is headed next year.

Every Friday the members of Only Influencers get to pitch their new products and services. Here is a sample from the last month.

As the holiday spending frenzy approaches, digital marketers should have a multi-point plan to capitalize on the busiest season of the year. If you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table. Consumers are the most active and spend the most money during the holidays.

It’s been just over a year since EEC 2015 and the panel on deliverability during which some of the largest inbox providers gave the audience some valuable insights into their definitions of engagement and how that relates to inbox placement. For those of you who missed that panel and are new to this debate Massimo Arrigoni wrote a very good summary on the Mail Up blog. What excited me most about the information the inbox providers shared was, for the first time since I got involved in email marketing we had valuable information direct from the horse’s mouth on what mail service providers really look at.

Ever wish your cookies were actually people?

Not the yum-yum type cookies, but the cookies that you use to identify and target consumers across different channels like Third Party Web Sites, Search, and Social Networks.

In case you missed it, using email newsletters to do content marketing is a thing. But not everyone is finding it to be effective. Many times the issue is the quality of the content. Here’s a brief overview of the situation along with 3 tips to help you elevate your content!

FulcrumTech is a full-service email-marketing agency that has a strong reputation for helping clients realize significant increases in their email-marketing ROI.

Revenue Automation (RA) is an IBM Silverpop partner and digital marketing agency. We specialize in data-driven email, marketing automation and data integrations.

RA serves business-to-consumer marketing executives by providing the following support services:

Lost in all the hullaballoo in recent weeks over Pokémon Go was the news that Google recently made available a ‘My Activity’ page, which makes it possible for people to see all the information Google has related to their user login.

By now, you’ve played Pokémon Go. And if you haven’t, you’ve witnessed someone who is playing it.

Welcome to the world of mainstream augmented reality. Before we dig deeper into the implications of Pokémon Go to Email Marketing – and yes, there are several – let’s begin with a complete understanding of what augmented reality is and how it came to be.

Pokemon Go became the top downloaded and top grossing app when it was released three weeks ago. It already has more Daily Active Users (DAUs) than Twitter, and there’s probably much more to come —Niantic, the developer, has hinted at features that will involve bricks-and-mortar stores and may drive even more usage. In short, Pokemon Go is a massive hit.

Every Friday, Email Vendors get to pitch the OI membership on their latest tool or service. Below is the best pitches for the last 30 days:

The simple email announcement came across my desk. All kinds of thoughts raced through my head and I considered all aspects of it in a matter of seconds. Do it! Don’t do it. Ack! Reach out and try. Move beyond your cube walls. This is an example of what you’ve been looking to do. What happens if peers and current leadership find out? What will it bring? What will it hurt? You’re not good enough. You are good enough. What will you say? You’ll figure it out somehow. And, in a split second I made a gut-decision and said yes to being one of the first contributors to the OI blog.

I recently signed up for two very different email lists, Pottery Barn and Chubbies. Why on earth would I add more email to my already exploding inbox? In the case of Pottery Barn, it’s because I want some new towels for my guest bathroom and I was hunting for a discount code. In the case of Chubbies, it’s because I heard from a co-worker that their emails were hilarious, and I wanted to see them for myself.

Having been on both the brand and vendor side – and having been part of multiple decisions to evaluate and/or change ESPs (hint – it’s not as hard as your current vendor makes it seem…nor as easy as your new vendor claims), I’m surprised by how many mismatches between client and vendor still happen. It’s the biggest reason for account churn – bad fit between the client and vendor.

The Relevancy Group’s “State of Identity Management Report” recently revealed that when it comes to driving actual revenue, deterministic data pays like a Lannister.

The UK’s vote to leave the European Union, aka Brexit, came as a shock to many, including a good number who voted for it. In the aftermath many are wondering both what happens now and what the impact will be.