Scott Hardigree is Founder and CEO at Email Industries, a Georgia-based company founded in 2008 as a specialist agency that now offers numerous dedicated tools enabling marketers, large and small, to make better use of the email channel. Last year, Email Industries acquired Inbox Expo, a leading international email marketing conference. (If you’re interested in attending this interesting show, it will be happening on May 13th to 15th in Atlanta).
Because email is a channel that continues to prove its viability (despite naysayers’ repeated (and erroneous) claims that it’s “dead”), I was eager to catch up with Scott to chat about what’s new and pressing, as well as best practices that often aren’t adhered to by marketers who should know better. Scott and I address a slew of developments and topics that should matter to anyone doing email marketing today, including:
- The extraordinary potential of email marketing in a post-cookie world, especially given its ability to create one-to-one connections with customers.
- Best practices regarding email list hygiene.
- Surefire warning signs that a marketers’ email addresses need to be cleaned.
- The importance of reactivating inactive customers through reengagement campaigns to avoid throwing them away.
- Why marketers need to prepare for stricter email deliverability requirements by authenticating sender domains and monitoring deliverability metrics.
- Why brands must prioritize DMARK (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) policy enforcement to prevent phishing attacks and protect reputation.
- Common deliverability issues in email marketing that need to be overcome.
- How human error is a significant factor in email deliverability problems, often caused by a single individual’s mistake.
- Why some marketers struggle to identify and resolve deliverability issues due to lack of visibility and benchmarking.
- How email program complexity and poor data quality can damage reputation and lead to spam complaints.
- Why some marketers have been slow to adopt strategic multi-channel orchestration, instead relying on replicating messages across channels without a clear strategy.
- How Google’s algorithms have improved email filtering, allowing for more personalized and targeted campaigns.
- Why smart email marketers often use third-party data append services to create targeted segments for email marketing campaigns.
- Topics of interest at the next Inbox Expo, which will feature a variety of sessions on deliverability, creative strategy, a startup fast pitch competition, and other email-specific topics.
