The email marketing space is a place where the only constant is change. Best practices change, available technologies change, the competitive landscape changes…and the best way to stay in the know is by following those who are the first to know.
As an email marketing professional, there are plenty of email marketing blogs vying for your attention these days and following them all may leave you spending a lot of time reading about email marketing, with little time left over to actually do email marketing. And while it holds true that “doing is the best way to learn,” you can also cut some time (and expense!) out of your learning process, by learning from these important email marketing blogs:
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9 must-read email marketing blogs
Word to the Wise
To learn about the latest news in the email marketing industry and understand professional analysis of what that news means for you (and your bottom line), turn to the WTTW blog for articles like a recent expose of the security risk posed by mailbox tools that gather information (unbeknownst to subscribers) and sells it to third parties or another recent post with a lowdown on IPV6 addresses and what the /8s are. All quite useful information for elite email marketers.
Return Path
For the latest technology and application of deliverability monitoring and reputation monitoring services, check out the blog from the good people of ReturnPath. Like their recent article “3 Trends Impacting Email: Hyperpersonalization, Part 3” which discusses the importance of optimizing the subscriber’s experience and gives tactical advice about how you can use a hyperpersonalized experience to differentiate yourself and make your messages get read, clicked, and converted!
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Marketing Sherpa
While it is true that specializing in email marketing requires unique and detailed understanding of email marketing in and of itself, remember that first and foremost, you are a marketer (then an online marketer, or an affiliate marketer) and you cannot neglect honing that skillset, as it is a great contributor and enabler of the email marketing you do every day. To that end, a great general marketing blog to follow is Marketing Sherpa (they also have an email marketing section and an email-marketing-focused newsletter).
They offer a lot of data-driven insight and examples that you can use as inspiration. For instance, in a recent post, they explored “The argument for sending your customers non-transactional emails in two case studies” with emailed marketing content from Marriott and Ferguson.
BriteVerify
We often explore the importance of list hygiene and its effects on your email marketing KPIs and success. To that end, the thought leader to follow is BriteVerify. With articles for beginners (“Start Clean: The Importance of Building a Valid Email List”) balanced with techniques for pros (“Boosting Gmail Deliverability: Tips From an Inbox Pro”), they offer high-quality insight about the issues trending in the email marketing space.
Quick tip: ever considered boosting your engagement by asking subscribers to REPLY to your message (instead of clicking through to a CTA)? Might be worth a shot…
Webbula
Basing your email marketing decisions on data is a wise career move – as long as the data you rely on is of the highest quality. This is where webulla comes in with articles like “Does your customer data look like Swiss cheese? Tips on how to fill data gaps and improve your data quality” and “Why Email is the Key Identifier for Marketing and Advertising Campaigns” and the importance of using the hashed email address to track user behavior.
Email on Acid
With coding tutorials, email marketing strategy, and industry trends, the folks at Email on Acid go beyond preview and testing concepts in their blog. Like in their article “Tinder Inspired Interactive Email: Interview With Penguin Random House,” where they explore a new application in email marketing technology and drill down into the details by interviewing the brilliant email marketer who initiated the campaign. The results? “We saw an increase in the number of total clicks and clicks per subscriber as a result of the interactivity.”
Litmus
Besides being absolute leaders when it comes to jaw-dropping design, the Litmus blog proves that they are not only design-leaders and preview/testing-leaders, but overall thought-leaders in the email marketing space.
Do you know the “The Little-Known Preview Text Hack You May Want to Use in Every Email?”
Ever committed one of these “3 Embarrassing Subject Line Mistakes to Avoid?”
The Litmus blog has you covered with informative articles, engaging podcasts, tips, tricks, and entertainment!
Email vendor selection
No matter what area of expertise you want to learn more about, turn to Jordie van Rijn, and email marketing consultant on the Email Vendor Selection Blog for an unbiased expert opinion. For example, if you are choosing an ESP and need information beyond the sales rhetoric, read “5 Things you need to know beyond what the ESP’s salespeople tell you” to learn about the 20% differentiation factor between competing providers. Understand how you can keep up with changing demands with pieces like “Demands on MarTech support are changing radically, can you keep up?”
In general, this is a site with in-depth information for professional email marketers – don’t miss it!
Inbox Pros
As deliverability experts, Inbox Pros really put their money where their mouth is. And it has paid off. Their blog content offers best practices and tricks of the trade for all email marketers looking to be at the top of their game. Understanding each and every small detail that can derail deliverability is clearly a priority for this company. Inbox Pros regularly takes a deep dive to explore the most popular domains to help you achieve your deliverability goals. They battle Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL, among others. Too good to be true? A good marketer never lies, check out their blog here.
Email Marketing Best Practice #1:
Learn from the pros and follow the eight email marketing blogs above. Then, read our blog for more email marketing best practices.
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