A Brief History of Email: Take a Trip Back through Time
I’ve been in marketing long enough to witness the communications revolution. Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember that there are many people are walking around today who don’t recall a time when email didn’t exist. These days, parents-to-be choose a name for their baby based on whether or not the Gmail, Outlook, and web […]
What Is DMARC and How Does It Affect My Email Marketing?
If you’re an email marketer, I’m sure you’ve heard of a new acronym floating around the email industry: DMARC! Many marketers have been asking what this new acronym is and whether it will affect their sending practices. My goal today is to ease your worries and explain very simply what it is and why you […]
How Clean is Your Marketing Data?
Have you ever been to a speed-dating event? You know, one of those things where bunches of people gather to try to find a prospective match? Time is limited, so the questions asked must cover the big picture: “What do you do for a living?” “Are you a cat or dog person?” or even “What’s […]
Warming a New Email Sending IP Address: Why It’s Important and How to Do It
The concept of “warming” a new email sending IP address is often brought up by email service providers (ESPs) and marketing automation services when discussing the implementation of a new, dedicated IP. For those new to the mechanics of email marketing, the subject can seem a little peculiar. Common feedback providers receive on the topic […]
Email deliverability: There’s a missing duck in your row
Depending on who you are and what your job title is, you likely think either content or the subject line is the MVP of an email campaign. I’m here to tell you that it’s neither – and you may be missing the single most important criterion in your line-up of success factors. If no one […]
Using the Unsubscribe Process to Grow Your Company
Making sure you have a solid email unsubscribe strategy is nothing new. You know that if people want out, then that means they want out, stat, and if you try to make it difficult for them to leave, they’ll only dislike you more. (Not to mention the legal requirements…) However, did you know that you’ve […]
Mind the Spam Trap: New On-Demand Webinar Helps You Avoid Being Blacklisted
You just got blacklisted. Now what? It happens to the best of companies. Even global players – Disney, Facebook, DMA, Citibank, and many others – have been sucker-punched by the blacklist, despite allocating staggering budgets to avoid such headaches. Created to combat spammers, blacklists are notorious registries that curate ne’er-do-well email marketers who don’t follow […]
How Yahoo’s Use of DMARC Makes Marketing Even Harder for Email Marketers
In April 2014, Yahoo began implementing stricter rules in regards to their authentication policies, as part of an ongoing effort to lower the risk of abuse and spam across the internet and email. Before I get into the specifics of what Yahoo did, there are a few points that I need to touch on so […]
6 Tips for Better Email
Have your unsubscribe rates been rising…and your open rates dropping? Possibly there’s no cause for concern. But usually when this happens it means your prospects are growing disinterested – most decidedly not a good thing. There are lots of ways to structure email programs. If you have a short sales cycle, fast turnover, and lower-priced […]
B2C Email Marketing: When and Why to Discount
Recently we wrote about three tactics to accelerate your B2C email marketing: personalization, segmentation, and trigger messages. This time around, we’re going to look at the common tactic of discounting, and we’ll give you a scenario that links all the tactics together in a strategy. Don’t rush to discount It’s common wisdom that new customers […]
Award-winning Education Tablet Solution LearnPad Sees 26x Growth in Marketing-Qualified Leads
Here’s a story that’s a true pleasure to write: Act-On customer LearnPad replaced an email marketing solution with marketing automation, and went from a few dozen marketing-qualified leads per month to over 700. In just six months! It all began when marketing manager Cody Ward got the green light to get automation. LearnPad makes and […]
5 Reasons Why Email List Hygiene Is a Serious Marketing Priority
The email ecosystem is constantly updating, changing the way we strategize email marketing initiatives. Tactics that worked three to five years ago don’t necessarily work today. Today, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) look at many different variables when determining whether to deliver one of our marketing emails to one of their customers. Every ISP does its […]
B2C Email Marketing: Three Ways to Increase Your Revenue and Customer Base
Editor’s note: This post comes to us courtesy of Tatyana Gavrilina, a specialist in email marketing at the Promodo Company, and the author of a number of publications on internet marketing. Are you using B2C email marketing to its fullest capacity? If you’re still doing batch-and-blast email – sending everyone in your database the same […]
Shared Vs. Dedicated IPs: Pros and Cons, Part 2
In Part 1 of this two-part series, we discussed the pros and cons of shared IP pools and which companies best benefit from them. To recap, a shared IP is one that is used by several other companies or senders, and a dedicated IP is one that is owned and operated by one company or […]
4 Keys to Mapping Successful Email Marketing Programs
For the umpteenth year in a row, email is still the Number One tactic for reaching audiences and generating revenue. Which is obviously why we use it. But the devil’s in the details; in the case of email marketing, the devil is “relevance.” Specifically, how can an email marketer consistently deliver relevant messages and offers […]
How Email Marketers Can Adapt to Gmail Tabs
Read this blog to learn how email marketers can adapt to Gmail tabs and what this might mean for your deliverability and engagement.
Online Personal Privacy Update
Would you walk naked down the road? Trust, consent, and transparency are the building blocks of the digital economy. We’re hardly through the first month of 2014, and we have seen two major retailers disclosure privacy breaches that combined could affect a THIRD of the population of the USA. I myself have been notified by […]
Shared Vs Dedicated IPs: Pros and Cons, Part 1
This is a two-part series that discusses the pros and cons of shared vs. dedicated IPs, to help companies make the right decision for their email marketing efforts. An IP address is an exclusive number online that services and devices use to identify you. Think of it as a mailing address. You might have your […]
11 Tips to Grow Your Email List
Generating high-quality leads has been the top B2B marketing challenge for a long time, and 2014 probably won’t be any exception. One way to meet your lead gen numbers is use email more effectively. The very first thing to consider is your list. How do you grow it, with the right names? There are three […]