Find Your Marketing Inspiration in the Swipe File

A “swipe file” is a collection of tested and proven marketing communications that you keep to inspire and inform your future messaging. We love this concept so much that we’ve created a series of Pinterest boards where we’re pinning marketing campaigns that inspire us. Today we unveiled the Email Swipe File, where…

In Defense of ‘Low’ Open Rates

No one wrings their hands over email marketing’s stellar ROI, but I’m surprised by how often a big deal is made out of “low” open, click and conversion rates. Everything is about perspective. And that’s absolutely the case when looking at open rates, which can be highly misleading, especially when compared over…

Email Marketing Is Blind in One Eye

Measuring the performance of your email marketing efforts is critical. It’s vital to maximizing program revenue, as well as subscriber happiness. But email marketing is not nearly as measureable as we like to think it is. Ignoring how unreliable so-called “open” rates are, subscribers react to our emails in a lot of…

A Focus Group of One

I’m a big fan of WhichTestWon. It’s a good, regular reminder that while my gut is pretty good at this point, it’s far from reliable—especially when I’m in unfamiliar territory. In the absence of firm knowledge or solid data to draw upon, you are pretty much left with your personal biases. That’s…

Welcome to Email Marketing Rules

The final rule in my upcoming book, “Email Marketing Rules,” is The Evolving Rule, which says: Be constantly learning, experimenting and testing because email marketing is always evolving. While books are great at building a foundation of knowledge, they’re not good at keeping you up to date on the latest thinking, which…