And the 2013 Stefan Pollard Marketer of the Year Award winner is....Sal Tripi of Publishers Clearing House! It was a very close call among our finalists, including Ryan Phelan of Acxiom Digital Impact and Morgan Steward of Trendline Interactive. The Award was presented at the 2013 Email Evolution Conference last week in Miami. Sal's acceptance video is located here.

Incredibly deserving of this recognition and Award, Sal is a stand-out in the marketing and consumer privacy field.  Through his good work at PCH, Sal has helped build one of the most impressive and customer centric email marketing programs in the business. Plus, he is incredibly generous in sharing learnings, knowledge and success stories with the rest of the industry. He's been a long time speaker and writer for DMA/eec events, as well as other email conferences. A staunch advocate and industry expert on consumer data protection, compliance issues and marketing best practices. he's also willing to step up and give back to the industry, and Chairs the DMA Ethics Policy Committee which reviews, updates, and sets ethical guidelines for marketers; Chairs the Online Trust Alliance; Sits on the IAB’s Email Committee. 

We want to thank again, Loren McDonald of Silverpop & Chair of the DMA/eec Awards Committee and all the members of the Committee for their hard work and efforts throughout this process and of course the community for taking the time to submit your choices and for sending beautiful tributes for this distinguished award. The response from the community was overwhelming.

Congratulations, Sal! We're proud to have you awarded with this top honor.

Lisa

 

Lisa Brown Shosteck

DMA/eec Team

In a recent poll* of some of the top marketers in the country (client side, vendor side, agency side, thought leaders, former clients and colleagues), the following question was posed:

What Are the Top Five Challenges You or Your Clients Face Today?

Below are the top five answers along with ten extras we just couldn't leave out.

This year, email and digital marketing seminars and conferences abound: EEC, Sherpa, MAAWG, EIS, DMA and dozens of others.

Each of these conference committees works hard to try and bring relevant content to attendees.  A lot of of these events are expensive, and these are hard economic times.  The committees try to secure speakers, panelists, keynotes and content, in addition to paid attendees and new membership.  Whast do the attendees want?  What are they looking to learn?  What can thought leaders provide?

As a marketer, new technology and marketing channels are critical.  As a vendor, exposure to new prospects, technology and social integrations are key for lead generation and PR.  As a business, you have an opportunity to learn about solving your own challenges and explore companies who might have solutions, and to learn about new channels and technology everyone says is critical, but you don’t exactly know how to put them all together, or just don’t know much about a specific channel…and you are charged with learning it now.

From the poll* of ~300 people – marketers, vendors, clients, former clients and agencies, the aggregate top five challenges for 2012 are (drum roll please):

1. Internal bandwidth and budget on marketing, vendor and IT sides – clients and vendors are looking to “up their game” with limited resources.
2. Marketing integration and optimization with new technologies into their existing platforms (and lack of knowledge base in new channels) – Mobile and Social lead the pack right now -and integrating email marketing with other traditional, and new channels.
3. List/Customer Acquisition and eAppend via any channel (the latter has truly become a 4-letter word these days.  It has 7 letters, actually).  How can I grow my list in accordance with the law and not lose a good portion of my list if I port vendors?  How can I utilize different channels to grow?  How do I acquire solid new customers?
4. Managing multiple “partner/vendor” contracts (sometimes 5 or 6 at a time) and those vendors’ unique abilities, and the failed efforts in wasted bandwidth to try and integrate them  with IT, their CRM databases and marketing into one email or other platform, including call centers.
5. Privacy: Interpreting Privacy Policies from social groups and global rules (EU, APAC, etc., Google, FB, Twitter – they have all been in the news, as has SOPA, ACTA, PIPA), yet internal bandwidth issues remain.  Clients do not have time to filter through 40 articles, nor read the laws.  And how do they have to change their web privacy policies to conform?
   
   This wouldn’t be complete without the next ten:
    
6. RFP help.  Or RFI help.  Email Service Provider Comparisons. This happens, quite often, in three areas of involvement on the client level: procurement, IT and/or marketing (or a combination).  They often work against each other with different goals, or have problems coming to fruition with marrying their multiple goals, cost-efficiently.
7. Mobile: Everyone has seen slides and knows the potential positive impact.  Some have seen case studies, but they don’t know how to go about it.  They look for aggregators, efficiency and ease of use.  QR codes and how to utilize them is included.
8. Loss of experienced professionals due to economy, and replacement with lower-paid/less expensive and less experienced staff who has to learn the “game” all over again – back to marketing 101 educations, diversification and separation of “duties” (e.g., a Social Media Manager, an Acquisition team, etc.).  Often working toward common goals, but at cross-purposes in the leadership/budget chain.
9. Combating declining channel effectiveness, and how to measure and test for increased adoption and engagement.
10. Utilizing analytics to full advantage.  All analytics, and how they can be integrated (from each channel) easily for a “one view.”  What do they all mean and how can I make sense of them and how do I marry them?
11. How to build effective messaging in a highly competitive marketplace.  How to leverage the ability to profile data for more relevant dialogues across all channels.
12. Utilizing analytics to full advantage.  We have web analytics, integration analytics, email analytics, social analytics, mobile analytics – basically this was a “HELP!”
13. Video.  How can I integrate video into my channels?
14. Increased use of triggered/automated email or other channel messaging – mostly with implementing automation, updating systems to handle, or creating the right rules and programs.
15. Testing.  Putting together a cross-channel testing methodology, including frequency/cadence.

And outsourcing is an issue as well.  To outsource or not to outsource?  A good question.

Email marketing is quickly overtaking a larger slice of the overall marketing budget as a cost efficient and effective channel.  Immediate visibility into data is key.  With companies becoming more competitive, each looks to grab as much of the "pie" as possible, increasing their capabilities and partnerships to alleviate some of the pain marketers feel, and be more "channel-ready."

While many of the above challenges seem iterative, these are the many of the topics that were the most pressing.  Everyone agrees email as an effective channel is not going away.  However, the commonality is that marketers feel the pressure to have all channels at their ready in a complex marketing stream and clients want help with streamlining this process and utilizing every resource they have to optimize every channel.  Together.

 

*This was an internal study conducted by information era marketing + consulting, llc (EIMC) in 2012, and represents a compendium of marketers’ and thought leaders’ top challenge opinions in a limited study.  Of ~300+ surveyed, response rates were ~48%.  This was a private study, and is proprietary to IEMC, llc.  Dori Thompson is a results-driven executive consultant with 19 years of experience in direct and online marketing, ecommerce, sales, strategy, and research.  She is also the co-chair of the eec Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee.

The eec Speakers Bureau continues its efforts to evangelize email marketing and industry thought leaders within our membership.

The next major launch, the re-launch of the eec's Expert Channel on YouTube, will also take place in conjunction with the Email Evolution Conference in February.  During the launch, qualified attendees will have the opportunity to film a segment and the channel will be promoted during the conference and via traditional and social media. For more information, contact Luke Glasner and Lana McGilvray.

A new initiative to ensure blogs across our membership are posted on a much more regular basis is also underway.  If you are a member and have a relevant blog, article or whitepaper you would like to see posted here on the eec blog, we are offering Compendium access to those members interested in promoting relevant eec content.  Please send your request for a Compendium account to Ali Swerdlow, or you can submit your content to her or to Dori Thompson.  Please ensure that blog submissions are well-edited and non-promotional to acclerate acceptance.

We are actively ramping up our social channels, and if you have not already done so, please activate your participation in the eec’s new Facebook page as we will be posting across all of our social channels.

- eec Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee co-chairs Lana McGilvray and Dori Thompson

With the calendar rolling quickly toward November and only a few months left before we see you all at the Email Evolution Conference 2012, we have a few exciting items we’d like to share on behalf of the entire Speakers Bureau.

First, if you haven’t participated in the eec Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee, or if you've considered joining, here’s what you should know. The Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee’s mission is to evangelize email as a key business driver for brands and publishers. It’s purposefully broad because we all know it’s a multi-channel world in which email has many applications that drive business. 

To fulfill our mission we place approved eec speakers across shows we manage, we serve as a speaker clearinghouse for organizations seeking qualified email marketing experts for their events and forums and we bring great content to external audiences. Qualifying to speak is easy; members can simply visit the Speakers Bureau page.

Second our working plan for 2012. During 2012, the Committee will execute against three key goals. We are currently planning how to best deliver and would love more involvement if anything strikes a chord.

1. We will begin utilizing social groups including LinkedIn and Facebook to grow our speakers bureau following, participation and engagement.
2. We will revamp our YouTube Channel so that the latest thought-leadership across our membership is available to communities interested in accessing our content.
3. We will expand our eec blog activity to get more and better content out to external audiences.

These three goals were selected in addition to the everyday work the committee does of reviewing and programming content across events and programs. If you have other ideas, please let us know by posting in the comments section below.

- Dori Thompson & Lana McGilvray

The eec members have spoken wisely – our new roster of Member Roundtable co-chairs is an impressive list of email marketing industry luminaries.  Please welcome our 2011-12 Roundtable and Advisory Committee Leadership:

• Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable: Colleen Petitt, Aprimo; Dwight Sholes, Sholes LLC
• Deliverability & Rendering Roundtable: Dennis Dayman, Eloqua; Matt Rausenberger, Return Path
• Email Design Roundtable: Lynn Baus, Responsys; Garrett Ryan, Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide
• List Growth & Engagement Roundtable: Ryan Phelan, BlueHornet; Nate Romance, ExactTarget
• Measurement Accuracy Advisory Committee: John Caldwell, Red Pill Email; Luke Glasner, Glasner Consulting
• Member Initiatives Advisory Committee: Joel Book, ExactTarget; Stephanie Miller, Return Path
• Speakers Bureau Advisory Committee: Lana McGilvray, Datran Media; Dori Thompson, Information era marketing + consulting

Thank you to all who voted and congratulations to our winners!  We look forward to another great year of productive and useful work on behalf of the industry.

eec Members: Want to join our initiatives?  Check out the Roundtables and sign up today by emailing Ali - ali@emailexperience.org.

If you ask which standard features to look for in an email marketing system, you’re asking the wrong question. The correct question is what do you need. Here’s why…

"It depends."
Recently at a marketing conference, one of the speakers stated that consultants are notorious for starting their answers with phrases like, "It depends."

Clients might think that’s a runaround. It’s not. Quite often, the answer to a client’s question isn’t, “If you do X, you will get Y”. Quite often it’s, “It depends.”

That’s also the way to start off any answer to any question about the features to look for when considering an email marketing system. It depends on what your needs are.

If choosing an ESP or email marketing system meant looking for standard features only, we likely wouldn't have over 100 ESPs to choose from. If there were standard features that narrowed down your choice and made comparisons easy, many of us would likely be out of business.

In reality, email marketing systems come with a wide range of capabilities in order to fulfill a wide range of business requirements. As a result, comparing email marketing systems or ESPs is like comparing apples to oranges.

If you can't simply start with a checklist, then where do you start? You start with your requirements. That is your checklist. The question shouldn’t be, "What features should we look for?" Rather, "What features do we need?"

Two factors you must consider
There are two factors you must consider no matter the ESP or email marketing system. One is the deliverability rate and the other is uptime. No matter the provider or system you choose, the deliverability rate and the uptime have to be as high as possible.

Uptime is easy to determine: Ask.

However, with deliverability "it depends" because it will vary for everyone. If one ESP gets a 97.3% deliverability rate for one customer and list, it doesn’t follow that they’ll achieve that same deliverability rate for another company with a different list. To make sure you choose an ESP or system with the highest deliverability rate for you, try and take your choices for a test drive, using the system to mail to your own list to test deliverability.

Unfortunately there isn't any one checklist that’s going to help you find the features you must have, but finding an ESP with an uptime of 99.5% or higher and high deliverability among its IP addresses is key to finding an ESP that is going to serve your best long-term.


- Marco Marini
CEO
ClickMail Marketing
 

All year long, the eec Member Roundtables and Advisory Committees work hard to produce relevant, timely content to help you become a better email and digital marketer.  Members who participate in these groups are truly the backbone of the eec and of the industry.

Now's your chance to get involved and make a difference in the email marketing industry!  Members can email Ali to sign up.

We have 4 active Roundtables:

• Cross-Channel Integration
• Deliverability & Rendering
• Email Design
• List Growth & Engagement

And we have 3 active Advisory Committees:

• Member Initiatives
• Speakers Bureau
• Measurement Accuracy

The eec members have spoken wisely – our new roster of Member Roundtable co-chairs is an impressive list of industry luminaries.  Please welcome our 2010-11 Roundtable Leadership:

• List Growth & Engagement Roundtable: Amy Bills, Bulldog Solutions; Nate Romance, ExactTarget
• Deliverability & Rendering Roundtable: Dennis Dayman, Eloqua; Michelle Pelletier, Return Path
• Speakers Bureau: Diksha Dua, Clementine Digital Boutique; Lana McGilvray, Datran Media
• Email Design Roundtable: Lynn Baus, Responsys; Megan Walsh-Regard, Williams-Sonoma
• Cross-Channel Integration Roundtable: Jeff Chamberlain, Aprimo; David Hibbs, Responsys
• Member Initiatives Roundtable: Joel Book, ExactTarget, Stephanie Miller, Return Path
• Measurement in Email Project: John Caldwell, Red Pill Email; Luke Glasner, Glasner Consulting

Thank you to all who voted and congratulations to our winners!  We look forward to another great year of productive and useful work on behalf of the industry.

New projects are starting in September; what would you like the eec to be working on?  Want to join our initiatives?  Check out the Roundtables and sign up today by emailing Ali.

We're excited to announce the annual Email Evolution Conference 2011 (EEC11) will be held January 31-February 2, 2011 at the Eden Roc Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. EEC11 will bring together practitioners and decision-makers to find practical approaches to email and digital marketing challenges faced by every marketer.

Be a Part of the Event!
We're accepting speaking proposals from individuals and companies that wish to be a part of the program. Submit your most fascinating case studies or the latest "how-to" information that every savvy email marketer should have in their toolbox. Selected speakers will receive a complimentary conference pass.

We're looking for abstracts in the following areas of email marketing:

• acquisition & retention strategies
• analytics/landing pages
• analyzing ROI
• charity/non-profit
• compliance & privacy
• creative strategies
• data integration
• deliverability & rendering
• dynamic content
• list growth/hygiene/management
• metrics & measurement
• mobile marketing
• preference centers
• relevance
• reputation
• segmentation & targeting
• social networking
• testing
• and more!

All proposals must be submitted by Friday, August 27, 2010.

If you are interested in exhibit and sponsorship opportunities, please contact Ali.

We look forward to receiving your proposal!

Well, I hope so. It's about time an email event had some drama and excitement. I have been going to industry events for years now and they are all the same: some great speakers, some not so great speakers; lots of buffet food, box lunches and good ideas.

But this year, the Email Evolution Conference (EEC09) promises to be different; at least in one session: The Great Email Debate. In this session, rumor has it that six of your favorite digital celebrities including Greg Cangialosi, Dave Hendricks, Peter Horan, Bill McCloskey, Kara Trivunovic, and DJ Waldow, are splitting into two sides and creating a Family Feud-esque scenario like no other.

We will finally see the mud flying as this group takes on tough questions like: Is it single opt-in or double? Do you remove inactives from your list? Do you precheck that box for opt-in?

I can't wait to see some candid conversations about topics that we all face every day. I will be moderating the session, but I will warn you, I am a hockey fan so seeing some blood or a good hip check as we address these issues won't make me sad.

This is only one of the many exciting sessions planned for EEC09.

If you are not yet registered for EEC09, you should be. Use discount code JAN09 and pay only $999* for the full conference (that includes one pre-conference workshop of your choice).

See you in a few weeks!
Jeanniey

*Only applies to new registrations.

I wanted to take a minute to thank you for all of your support of the eec so far. Thanks to fantastic people like you, the eec continues to grow in both size and stature within the email industry.

Over the past three years, the eec has been able to create a community that offers those from all areas of the email marketing industry the opportunity to come, learn and act collectively in positive ways that help change increase the respect and value that email receives from the marketing and advertising worldl.

Collectively, we have helped increase the ROI of email marketing, lobbied for better laws, stronger relationships with ISP's and better integration into other channels like social marketing, mobile markeitng and even search, display and TV. A few of us even wrote books about it!

With all that we have accomplished, we can't sit back and be satisfied. We need to strive for more! More effective email campaign results, more impactful creative, more leverage with ISP's, more innovation with the technologies we use, and more networking to strengthen our collective spirit.

It is with this call for MORE that I am pleased to extend a personal invitation for you to join me at EEC09 in Scottsdale, Arizona, February 9-11th. Use discount code JAN09 to register for just $999* (register at www.emailevolution.org).

Join me, Jeanniey Mullen, as well as our well respected powerful keynote speaker and father of Direct Marketing: Stan Rapp, along with David Daniels, Bill Nussey, Kath Pay, Peter Horan, David Baker, Stephanie Miller, Dela Quist, Ali Swerdlow, Loren McDonald, Stefan Pollard, Jeanne Jennings, Dave Hendricks, Bill McCloskey, Skip Fidura, Dylan Boyd, Aaron Kahlow, Chris Baggott and many other email superstars at this year's event.

In challenging times like these, attending conferences that offer insights and actionable learnings is critical. And, sometimes the networking that happens at the event proves to be even more beneficial. You have my word that you will not be disappointed at this event.

I really hope to see you there. And, if you can make it, drop me an email when you register: jeanniey@emailexperience.org. I would love to say hi at the event and spend some time with you.

Sincerely,

Jeanniey Mullen
eec Founder and Executive Chair

*Only applies to new registrations

Please help us get the word out about the eec Speakers Bureau by including the following item in your next client newsletter or on your blog:

Email Marketing Experts Available to Speak at Your Next Event

Do you belong to an organization or group whose members could benefit from learning more about email marketing? Then please tell them that the Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council wants to help. The eec's Speakers Bureau has experts available across the U.S. and Canada who have committed themselves to helping email marketers maximize their return on investment and avoid pitfalls such as CAN-SPAM violations and being blacklisted. These industry veterans have waived all speakers' fees and can talk on a wide variety of topics, including…

● How Email Compliments Other Channels
● Obeying CAN-SPAM and Other Laws
● Getting and Maintaining Permission
● Ensuring Your Emails Are Delivered
● Growing a Large and Active List
● What to Send to Your Subscribers

To learn more and to request a speaker, please visit the eec's Speakers Bureau.

*Help us spread the word about this initiative by re-running this item in your client newsletter or on your blog. Thank you.

We had the pleasure of having two brilliant Brits join us as keynote speakers at our Connections '08 conference in Indianapolis last week. These included Nigel Travis, CEO of Papa John's and former president at Blockbuster, Inc., as well as Joseph Jaffe, author of Join the Conversation and frequent blogger at www.jaffejuice.com. Both energized the crowd of 1,100 and presented an inspirational vision for engaging customers in an ongoing dialog. This made me wonder: As more of the power shifts to the consumer, how many businesses could increase their bottom line by just by doing a better job of listening?

Papa John's has done a number of things to listen to their customers. For example, they saw more of their clients move toward web and SMS, so they acted quickly to offer both of those channels to their customers for ordering. Papa Johns has surpassed over $1 billion in web orders and more and more customers are ordering via SMS. That is a lesson in going to where your customers are, joining the dialog, and responding.

The opportunity for differentiation in pizza is bigger than you might think. Even though there are over 65,000 restaurants in the U.S., consumers average just 4 visits per year to a pizza restaurant. Loyalty is challenged by the sheer number of choices. Yet Papa John's recognizes that to differentiate themselves they have to engage their customers and join the conversation. What if they do a better job listening to their customers than Pizza Hut, Domino's or local chain down the street? Can they not only claim all 4 visits to their restaurant, but also make it such a frictionless order process, solid product and customer experience that they increase the visits to 6, or even 8 per year?

We launched Subscribers Rule! as the theme of our conference for this very reason. Consumers are empowered today more than ever. This power manifests itself in two key ways.

First, consumers are empowered by choice—what to buy, what to wear, how to communicate. Plus, competition has made these choices all "good enough" for most consumers, so it has become increasingly difficult for companies to differentiate themselves.

Second, consumers are empowered by technology—social networks, Twitter, blogs, Google groups, viral email, etc. and they can say what they want about you at any time they wish to do so. Monitoring the web through Google Alerts, for example, to see what humanity is saying about your company is now critical.

The combination of endless consumer choice and nearly boundless ability to spread a message has changed the game for marketers. The conversations are happening and it is up to marketers to join in or be overlooked for the brands that are engaging their customers on their turf.

As I reflect upon these trends as it applies to where many are morphing their email programs, it actually maps pretty well. The call toward triggered messaging relevant to a consumer's activity, or the need to deliver dynamic promotions based on product category searches speaks to the relevance that consumers not only want, but are in a position to demand.

As Joe Jaffe says in Join the Conversation: "Conversation…is a two-way dialog or a stream of messaging between two or more parties with like-minded or shared beliefs, wants, needs, passions, or interests. Conversation is not initiated by any one person, side, or organization. It is organic, nonlinear, unpredictable, and natural."

At our conference we had over 50 customers share stories on how they are using email to deepen the relationship with their customers, improve the dialog, optimize relevancy, and increase stickiness. Some customers are doing really incredible things with CRM integrations, or analytic system integrations to drive that relevancy, and scaling it. It is really fun to see technology and marketing action match up to what was once just theory. As these technologies and trends continue to evolve, the next year is going to be fun to watch and take part in!

— Chip House of ExactTarget

This 4-hour seminar in New York is part of a ground-breaking series of email compliance-focused events. This specific seminar will cover the LashBack and UnsubCentral processes and deliverables within a framework of educating participants as to the need for comprehensive compliance process as a foundation to successful email marketing and email reputation protection.

Participants will learn the 10 Guidelines of CAN-SPAM compliance, with drill down on unsubscribe compliance, unsubscribe processes including suppression list best practices, the new FTC unsubscribe rule and compliance's overall impact on reputation and deliverability.

Email Compliance: The Foundation of Reputation and Deliverability
Produced by the Email Experience Council and the Direct Marketing Association
Monday, Nov. 3 at 1pm
eec/DMA Seminar Center, New York

Speakers:
John Engler, Vice President and General Manager, UnsubCentral
Bennet Kelley, Esq., Founder, The Internet Law Center
James O'Brien, Director of Marketing, LashBack

This seminar is $99, but eec members can get $20 off using the discount code "eecM."

>>Register Now for this seminar!

Ask me what I do for a living. Go ahead. Ask. I love to tell people about email marketing, and so do most of our eec members. So after a lot of discussion and effort, we're proud to announce the launch of the eec Speakers Bureau. The concept is a simple one, but with tremendous power behind it. While most of us in the eec live and breathe (and dream and sweat) email marketing, that's not necessarily the case with all marketers everywhere. Many companies either don't do email marketing or worse, do it badly.

The new Speakers Bureau will match eec members with speaking opportunities at events that without our support would have little or no programming about email marketing. The goal of the Bureau is to spread fundamental best practices by proactively reaching out to communities where our message of responsible, permission-based email marketing can do the most good.

But we need your help to make this a big success. We want to expand the roster of available speakers to be able to provide assistance to conference organizers large and small. Please join the Speakers Bureau and register to be considered for speaking requests in your community.

Additionally, let us know of any conferences or events that would be an ideal platform to deliver marketers information about email marketing best practices. We'll match up the organization's needs with a speaker. We would also appreciate it if you let us know about articles, whitepapers and other free resources related to the topics covered by the Bureau that can be distributed to support and extend our presentations.

Many thanks to everyone on the Communications Roundtable who worked long and hard to get us to this point. We look forward to making the Speakers Bureau beneficial for eec members and the organizations we reach out to, providing lots of information about email marketing at its basic and its best.

—eec Communications Roundtable co-chair Kay Cavender of Silverpop

In the marketing and advertising world, the consumer is in control. Understanding consumer drivers is critically important in driving success regardless of what role you have. When you overlay personal consumer drivers with channel specific and multi-channel marketing impacts, not only you will you succeed in the eyes of your customer, but you will also drive the relationship you have with them to the next level.

Recent research released by digital publisher Zinio and the Harrison Group enables marketers to go somewhere they have not been able to go before: into the minds of digital consumers. Attend this webinar to hear the latest benchmarks and findings captured for readers of digital magazines. But don't be deceived! While the study appears to focus on insights around digital magazines, this data is imperative to understand if you have or ever plan to advertise in a print publication or online, if you use email to promote book or magazine subscriptions, or if you send email.

The Digital Consumer—How Email and Digital Impact Marketing Choices
Hosted by the Email Experience Council
Thursday, March 20 at 1pm EST/10am PST

Speakers:
Jeanniey Mullen, the Email Experience Council's founder and executive chairwoman and Zinio's global EVP, CMO
Chad White, director of retail insights and editor-at-large at the Email Experience Council

–>REGISTER NOW for this no-cost webinar!

Want to cruise the San Diego harbor with more than 250 of the best minds in email marketing? Then register now for the Email Evolution Conference, which is being held Feb. 12-13 at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina in San Diego. The next 25 registrants will get a free ticket to join the conference speakers and sponsors on the cruise on the evening of Feb. 11 (a $199 value).

>>REGISTER TODAY

Following the announcement we made on this blog last week regarding the availability of the session schedule for the Email Evolution Conference, yesterday we released a more formal version of that announcement to the media, adding some new details. For instance, the conference's 34 sessions will include more than 85 speakers. Over the past few days we've updated the conference program with more of those names, which include executives from National Geographic Society, Conde Nast, American Express, Gannett Co., Allstate, Live Nation, Cisco, KeyBank and eHarmony.

We also promised that each of the 27 breakout sessions will include at least one marketer, so attendees can be sure to get real-world advice on everything from deliverability and list hygiene to acquisition and multichannel marketing.

In addition to all the educational sessions, we also announced that the conference will include an Experience Hall, with exhibits from more than 40 of the industry's top vendors and service providers, including Message Systems, Puresend, Habeas, and the conference's exclusive title sponsor, ExactTarget. The Experience Hall will feature special pods instead of booths, which will allow for better networking and make you feel less like a mouse in a maze of booths.

For more information or to take advantage of early bird rates, please visit http://www.emailevolution.org.

We're happy to unveil the schedule for the Email Evolution Conference, which is being held in San Diego, Feb. 12-13. This initial schedule includes speaker details on our four exciting keynotes:

1. Pete Sheinbaum, the CEO of Daily Candy, will be speaking about his company's successes with email.
2. Jerry Cerasale of the DMA and Eileen Harrington of the FTC will discussing the state of privacy and marketing laws in the U.S. and abroad.
3. Dylan Boyd, one of the main people behind eROI's blogs; Tamara Gielan, the author of the BeRelevant! blog; and Chad White, the author of RetailEmail.Blogspot, will be talking about our blogging efforts, why we do what we do and where we get our ideas.
4. And JupiterResearch's David Daniels, ExactTarget's Chip House, Microsoft's Craig Spiezle and the eec's Jeanniey Mullen will be…well, it's difficult to explain. But it's sure to be unforgettable.

Outside of the keynotes, the conference is organized into three tracks:
- Fundamental, which is geared toward the Email Deployment Manager/Coordinator;
- Intermediate, which is intended for Interactive/Direct Marketing Managers and Directors; and
- Advanced, which is for Executive Marketing/Advertising Leads and CMOs.

We've all been to conferences where we sat in sessions that were either totally over our heads or didn't tell us anything new at all. The three-track format is designed to ensure that all attendees are getting information tailored to their expertise levels. As you can see from the agenda, the sessions cover a wide range of email marketing topics, from acquisition and list management to multichannel marketing and our charity work with the Women's Bean Project. It should be very educational and a lot of fun.

We'll be releasing more details about sessions, events and speakers in the weeks ahead. We have lots of cool things planned, so stay tuned.

The convergence of online, offline and face to face—it's happening this week!

For those of us who have been working in email, on the service provider side, for a long time, we know it can often be a challenge to get marketers to agree to integrate email into all of the other channels they are using. Many times, clients want to use email first, and then use a different channel when they run out of names with email addresses.

It's been proven time and time again, that while email is a very powerful response vehicle, it is also even more powerful when combined with other channels and sent to the same target. This week, at the Email Insider Summit we are doing just that!

Attendees of the summit will have face-to-face interactions with speakers about key email topics. They can also then leave the presentations and pick up a printed whitepaper that extends the discussion of the panel just conducted. And…if two channels aren't enough, these same people can request an "email" of all of the relevant whitepapers and case studies shared at the EEC whitepaper room by choosing all of the content located under this title: "Email Insider Summit - May 2007."

This will be a great validation of the power of combined channels and I am very much looking forward to seeing the impact and results.

—Jeanniey Mullen