The Pros & Cons of the New ‘Block’ Button from Gmail

Gmail rolled out new “block” functionality to all Gmail webmail users yesterday, giving consumers yet another option to rid their inboxes of email they don’t want. On the surface, that might not sound like a great thing for marketers, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. This option is just one…

‘The Email Episode’ of Salesforce’s new Marketing Cloudcast

I was honored to be one of the first guests on Salesforce’s new podcast, the Marketing Cloudcast, which is hosted by my friends Heike Young and Joel Book. The podcast is available on Soundcloud and via iTunes. In “The Email Episode: Giving Email a Little Respect,” we talk about: What I do…

How Would An Email Tax Change Email Marketing?

On April Fools’ Day, Forbes ran a story about how Congress was considering a tax on email by amending the Internet Tax Freedom Act the next time it comes up for renewal. It was a great gag, and while I think there’s zero chance of any kind of email tax coming into…

Opens, Clicks, Junks, and Blocks in the Third Age of Email Deliverability

In the First Age of Email Deliverability, there were no rules and few if any consequences for bad behavior. In the Second Age, ISPs armed their users with “report spam” and “junk” buttons and senders that received too many spam complaints had their emails junked or blocked. In the Third Age, which…

Inbox by Gmail: 3 Experts Share Their Thoughts on Its Impact – Part 2

Inbox by Gmail is the latest email innovation by Google to get marketers wringing their hands and worrying about how their programs will be affected. To help determine its impact on marketers, BrightWave CEO Simms Jenkins interviewed Ryan Phelan of Acxiom, Jay Jhun of BrightWave, and myself about the new app. In…

Fall Edition of the Email Marketer’s Holiday Planning Checklist

Hopefully you spent your summer doing some big picture strategic planning for the holiday season. Now that we’re into October, it’s time to get more serious and more focused to the execution of holiday campaigns. In the second of my 3-part Holiday Planning Checklist for Internet Retailer Magazine, I advise retailers to:…

Tweetables from Connections 2014

It was a great week at Connections and I found plenty of great content to tweet about. In case you missed them, here are all the tidbits, factoids, and stats that I shared this week from the conference. You can find all the tweets from Connections at #CNX14. Watch the Digital Marketing…

Gmail’s Native Unsubscribe Link: The Upside and Downside

Gmail is making email marketers sweat again. In the last year alone, the debut of Tabs caused all-out panic, image caching set new open rate baselines, and grid view led to rendering concerns. Now Gmail is following up with a partial rollout of a highly visible native unsubscribe link in March with…

COI or COIL: Every Opt-In Should Be Confirmed

No, this is not a rant in favor of universal usage of double or confirmed opt-in (COI), although it certainly has its place. I’ve been a long-time supporter of single opt-in as “good enough” for most permissioning scenarios—especially when there’s active consent—and nothing has changed my view on that. However, risks around…

Unroll.Me Is a Promotions Tab in an Email

Unroll.Me is the kind of service that makes email marketers nervous. It facilitates unsubscribes and bundles messages from multiple brands into a single daily email digest, and its user base has quickly grown to more than 720,000. However, there’s no reason for alarm. We’ve seen this before. Unroll.Me is quite similar to…