Word to the Wise helps email marketers create more effective email messages, programs and infrastructures. We advise you how to skillfully navigate the constant business, technology, and policy challenges so your messages reach your customers.
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While we’re working on a Speaking Schedule page for my upcoming events, I’ll just update the blog. My schedule for Q1 and Q2 is coming together. M3AAWG 36: San Francisco, February 16 – 18th. I’ll be up on Monday afternoon. No official speaking at this one, just sitting in the audience and listening. But stop by and say hi! Email Evolution Conference: Hosted by the EEC, New...
I am, apparently, still one of the top hits when you Google for AOL. When things break at AOL, this means I get lots of contacts, comments and even phone calls from people looking for help. I’m really not AOL support. (Really. I’m not. If you’re an AOL user I can’t help you log into your account. Please don’t call. Please don’t ask. Contact AOL directly.) BUT...
Ask the Expert: How Can Email Marketers Stay Out of Gmail Jail and in the Inbox? The expert in question is an old friend of mine, Andrew Barrett. I met Andrew online in the late 90s, and we worked together (briefly) at MAPS. He was out of email for a while, but I’m pleased he came back to share his talents with us. The information in the article is valuable for anyone who struggles with...
Happy 2016! We started off the year with a few different “predictions” posts. As always, I don’t expect to be right about everything, but it’s a useful exercise for us to look forward and think about where things are headed. I joined nine other email experts for a Sparkpost webinar on 2016 predictions, which was a lot of fun (see my wrap up post here), and then I wrote a long post about security...
Yesterday I talked about how the truth matters in email marketing. But that’s not the only place the truth matters. Today I found myself in a bit of a … discussion on Facebook. It ended up being a lesson in why you should never trust the clickbait headline. I also realized there are parallels with email best practices and how we share them with people. The Facebook discussion One of...
Call within the next 10 minutes… Consumers with last names starting with O – Z can call tomorrow… Only 5 seats left at this price! All of these are common marketing techniques designed to prompt consumers to buy. It’s not a new idea, create a sense of urgency and people are more likely to buy. I think some marketers are so used to making outrageous claims to support...
It was about 8 months ago I published a list of ESPs that prohibit the use of purchased lists. There have been a number of interesting responses to that post. ESPs wanted to be added to the list The first iteration of the list was crowdsourced from different ESP representatives. They shared the info they had with each other. With their permission, I put it together into a post and published it...
An Advice Column on Email Delivery When we work with brands and senders to improve email delivery, there are many questions that come up again and again. For 2016, we thought it might be interesting to answer some of those questions here on the blog so others can benefit from the information. Confused about delivery in general? Trying to keep up on changing policies and terminology? Need some...
Gerald Marshall of Email Industries looked at over a hundred different 2016 predictions and organized them for us. Most predictions went into the segmentation and personalization and automation buckets. Only a few predictions were security related, which either means I’m ahead of the curve or on a different planet. Time will tell.
An old blog post from 2013, that’s still relevant today. “Blocked for Bot-like Behavior” An ESP asked about this error message from Hotmail and what to do about it. “Bot-like” behaviour usually means the sending server is doing something that bots also do. It’s not always that they’re spamming, often it’s a technical issue. But the technical problems make the sending server look like a bot...
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