Remembering J.D.

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write in 12 years as Return Path’s CEO. I hope it never has an equal.

One of our long-time employees, J.D. Falk, passed away today after a year-long struggle with cancer. J.D., which most people don’t know was short for Jesse David, was only 37 years old. Although I cannot claim to be a close friend of J.D.’s, I have known him fairly well in the industry going back about eight years, and he has been a trusted member of our team here for the last four+ years.

J.D. did great work for us at Return Path, but my admiration for him goes beyond that.

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A Marketer’s Field Guide to B2B Inboxes

Sending email to corporate mailboxes has some unique challenges. You can have the best sending reputation in the world with consumer ISPs but find your email bulked or blocked by numerous corporate filters. The reason for this is that many businesses implement and administer their own email infrastructure and customize it based on their specific needs. These IT staffs have a plethora of hardware and software filtering options at their disposal and can configure them to their heart’s content. It can be very challenging to predict how your email will be handled from one business to another – even if they are using the same message filters.

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12 Days of Christmas: Show Some Holiday Hospitality with a Warm Welcome

Being a native New Yorker living in London with a geographically dispersed team of consultants and clients in multiple countries, I do a lot of international travel. As a result, I have learned to cope reasonably well with the various hassles associated with long-haul plane journeys, including the inevitable delays, bad food, cramped seats, turbulence, lengthy lines and jet-lag.

While it’s impossible to ignore the mind-numbingly repetitive, time-consuming and occasionally unpleasant nature of travel these days, one part of the process never fails to put a smile on my face. It happens when I’m on the immigration line at whichever U.S. airport I frequently travel to—JFK, DEN or SFO—and the immigration officer finishes with the questions, stamps my passport and says “Welcome home.” For some reason, that greeting alone makes everything else worth it.

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12 Days of Christmas: The “Silver and Gold” of Your Marketing Program

Recently, I was humming the Burl Ives holiday song, “Silver and Gold” (apparently, my early shopping has gotten me in the holiday spirit). As an email marketer, I couldn’t help but think about silver and gold as it relates to marketing: email and social. While email and social (just like silver and gold) can each sparkle in their own right, they are much more vibrant and powerful when combined. In order to take full advantage of these two powerful channels, keep these integration tips in mind …

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12 Days of Christmas: It’s the Mobile Wonderful Time of the Year

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – - and also the busiest. With shopping, parties, and family events added to the calendar, people are rushing around even more than usual to fulfill the many demands December brings. But thanks to technology, we now have one must-have-to-survive-it-all item to keep people in touch with one another and work, while also managing schedules and spur of the moment internet searches. Yes – it’s the mobile phone.

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The 12 Days for Christmas: The Mobile Questions and Answers That Will Impact Your Email Program All Year Long

Some questions asked during the holiday season may be best left unanswered: is Santa Claus real? How old is the fruit cake? Is this a regift? What’s in the egg nog? Why are batteries never included? Who invited the in-laws to stay for two weeks? Why is it OK to play any song by the Chipmunks and pretend it’s music?

However, if you’re an email marketer charged with driving revenue from the email channel and are expecting Q4 to heavily impact your bottom line, there are some questions that you can’t afford not to ask. In particular, questions about mobile email and how many of your subscribers are using their mobile devices to interact with your messages, browse your website and shop.

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12 Days of Christmas: Silent Night (and Day!) – When Your Subscribers Stop Engaging

In my previous contribution to this series, I talked about how email marketers should implement a re-activation strategy as part of a broader approach to drive up subscriber engagement. Engagement metrics are now playing an important role in informing ISP filtering decisions. Inactive addresses are also costing you money to broadcast, and – to add insult to injury – they are diluting your campaign performance metrics too.

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12 Days of Christmas: Don’t Forget the Holiday Wrapping

From holiday parties to decorating and shopping for gifts, there seems to be a never ending list of things to do during the holiday season. And while you are not likely to forget to put up the tree or attend your company holiday party, you just might forget to pick up a gift for your child’s teacher or put out cookies for Santa. The same goes for busy marketers. While a great deal of effort is put into the creative campaign planning, it can be easy to forget to put a bow and ribbon on a major work horse of your email program: the transactional emails.

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12 Days of Christmas: The Art of Giving

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of giving someone a gift that they really love. It really supports the saying “‘tis better to give than to receive.” You got it right. You bought something that you knew the recipient would like based on what you know about them: their interests, their sex or age, their behavior or something they’ve told you. Then there are the signs that you’ve missed the mark: the feigned enthusiasm from the recipient, their furtive search for the gift receipt. Oh well, better luck next year.

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12 Days of Christmas: Holiday Fashion Tips for Your Email

Is your email properly dressed for the holidays?

That might seem like a funny question, but just as you would be sure to wear the right type of outfit to the company holiday party or to that trendy by-invitation-only event, your email also needs to be attractively styled to generate a positive response.

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