Following prior posts about the Top Resources for Email Marketing Education, we now get to the top independent blogs about email marketing. Blogs in this category are authored by people not directly affiliated with any particular ESP. While blogs were a more popular overall (as shown in the chart on the original post), there are simply more blogs on email marketing than there are publishers covering the space. As a result, these top blogs were not referenced as frequently as the publications were--the results were more distributed. To keep this list to a manageable number, we elected to recognize only the top 5--consistent with the top email marketing publications.
Here are the reults:
#1) Retail Email Blog **
Chad White was trained as a journalist and is the author and researcher behind the independent blog mentioned most frequently in our survey of go-to email marketing resources. Chad follows approximately 100 retailers at any time and looks at ALL of their email. Moreover, he has been doing this since 2006—he has definitely seen his fair share of email. His blog provides a virtual play-by-play of what retail email marketers are sending, from his “Subjectivity Scanner” posts where he recaps subject lines people are using, to who’s trying new stuff like embedded video or social media integration. If you are looking for examples with some insightful commentary, this is the place to go.
#2) Email Marketing Reports
Mark Brownlow is a writer and academic type. In his own words, “Email Marketing Reports entered life in November 2001 because I was tired of decent folk sending spam because nobody helped them learn the basics of legitimate email marketing.” His blog is dedicated to education. His articles consistently provide a balanced view of hot topics in the email industry and while he often references other sites, articles and studies, he can always be trusted to the appropriate context before sending readers off to another site
#3) BeRelevant! **
Tamara Gielen (collaborator on the study) is the author behind BeRelevant! Currently an independent email marketing consultant, Tamara has been a email practitioner for years having worked client side for Cognos and eBay, and agency side for OgilvyOne. Tamara started the blog as a tool for her to keep track of articles and topics she found useful in her own work and the blog has the same feel today. Most of her posts are lists of articles, tools, studies, and any other resources you could imagine on email marketing. Consider this blog a filter for articles worth reading.
#4) Convince & Convert
Jason Baer has been working in digital marketing since 1994 and was the founder of Mighty Interactive. The consummate entrepreneur, Jason is at it again as the founder of Convince & Convert, now a year old. Convince & Convert’s tagline is “social media and email consulting,” so while he focuses on social media first, don’t let that (nor his 6,000+ Twitter followers) lead you to believe he has moved on from email. His blog focuses on using technology to build community and he consistently provides sound advice on how to incorporate email into that process.
#5) Smith-Harmon
Smith-Harmon is an agency based in Seattle, WA dedicated to email marketing. They also happen to employ Chad White—so the Smith-Harmon crew is a deep well of expertise in email marketing. Their blog highlights different emails that catch their eye and typically focuses on the creative and aesthetic aspects of email. Even so, there is always an eye on the messages intent and execution. In short, the blog represents the personalities of the agencies founders, Lisa Harmon—the email industries queen of fashion, and Aaron Smith—the technical guy, but hardly a techie when it comes to style.
** Blogs by Chad White and Tamara Gielen have been noted as being potentially biased because their blogs were recruiting sources for this study. That said, they were asked to participate in recruitment because we know their blogs to be trusted email marketing resources. They both belong in your list of top 5 email marketing bloggers to follow (if they aren’t already). We’ll let them fight out their ranks respective to Mark, Jason, and Smith-Harmon if they feel so inclined, but I wouldn’t count on bloodshed, this is about the nicest group of folks you could imagine.
Disclaimer: ExactTarget is an advertiser, sponsor and/or partner of many of the sites listed in these survey results. Our affiliation with these sites did not play into their rankings—rankings were based solely on the responses of 351 respondents to an open-ended question contained in the survey fielded in March 2009 by ExactTarget and the Email Marketers Club.
Here are the reults:
#1) Retail Email Blog **
Chad White was trained as a journalist and is the author and researcher behind the independent blog mentioned most frequently in our survey of go-to email marketing resources. Chad follows approximately 100 retailers at any time and looks at ALL of their email. Moreover, he has been doing this since 2006—he has definitely seen his fair share of email. His blog provides a virtual play-by-play of what retail email marketers are sending, from his “Subjectivity Scanner” posts where he recaps subject lines people are using, to who’s trying new stuff like embedded video or social media integration. If you are looking for examples with some insightful commentary, this is the place to go.#2) Email Marketing Reports
Mark Brownlow is a writer and academic type. In his own words, “Email Marketing Reports entered life in November 2001 because I was tired of decent folk sending spam because nobody helped them learn the basics of legitimate email marketing.” His blog is dedicated to education. His articles consistently provide a balanced view of hot topics in the email industry and while he often references other sites, articles and studies, he can always be trusted to the appropriate context before sending readers off to another site#3) BeRelevant! **
Tamara Gielen (collaborator on the study) is the author behind BeRelevant! Currently an independent email marketing consultant, Tamara has been a email practitioner for years having worked client side for Cognos and eBay, and agency side for OgilvyOne. Tamara started the blog as a tool for her to keep track of articles and topics she found useful in her own work and the blog has the same feel today. Most of her posts are lists of articles, tools, studies, and any other resources you could imagine on email marketing. Consider this blog a filter for articles worth reading.#4) Convince & Convert
Jason Baer has been working in digital marketing since 1994 and was the founder of Mighty Interactive. The consummate entrepreneur, Jason is at it again as the founder of Convince & Convert, now a year old. Convince & Convert’s tagline is “social media and email consulting,” so while he focuses on social media first, don’t let that (nor his 6,000+ Twitter followers) lead you to believe he has moved on from email. His blog focuses on using technology to build community and he consistently provides sound advice on how to incorporate email into that process.#5) Smith-Harmon
Smith-Harmon is an agency based in Seattle, WA dedicated to email marketing. They also happen to employ Chad White—so the Smith-Harmon crew is a deep well of expertise in email marketing. Their blog highlights different emails that catch their eye and typically focuses on the creative and aesthetic aspects of email. Even so, there is always an eye on the messages intent and execution. In short, the blog represents the personalities of the agencies founders, Lisa Harmon—the email industries queen of fashion, and Aaron Smith—the technical guy, but hardly a techie when it comes to style. ** Blogs by Chad White and Tamara Gielen have been noted as being potentially biased because their blogs were recruiting sources for this study. That said, they were asked to participate in recruitment because we know their blogs to be trusted email marketing resources. They both belong in your list of top 5 email marketing bloggers to follow (if they aren’t already). We’ll let them fight out their ranks respective to Mark, Jason, and Smith-Harmon if they feel so inclined, but I wouldn’t count on bloodshed, this is about the nicest group of folks you could imagine.
Disclaimer: ExactTarget is an advertiser, sponsor and/or partner of many of the sites listed in these survey results. Our affiliation with these sites did not play into their rankings—rankings were based solely on the responses of 351 respondents to an open-ended question contained in the survey fielded in March 2009 by ExactTarget and the Email Marketers Club.
ExactTarget Feed
Powered by Compendium Blogware
Comments for Top Independent Email Marketing Blogs