PRESS RELEASE
This acquisition uniquely positions Trendline to help Fortune 500 companies transform their email marketing programs.
AUSTIN, Texas – April 22, 2019 – Email consulting and professional services firm Trendline Interactive today announced the acquisition of Canadian email agency Inbox Marketer, further strengthening Trendline’s strategy, data management and analytics service offerings.
“Forward-thinking organizations are embracing digital transformation, and email is the digital channel they look to first,” said Morgan Stewart, CEO of Trendline Interactive. “While new technologies allow marketers to connect with customers in increasingly personal and relevant ways, marketers also need to deploy the right people and processes to fully leverage these tools. Inbox Marketer bolsters our ability to identify quick wins and implement strategic solutions that drive digital marketing transformation.”
Trendline and Inbox Marketer were both recognized as email industry leaders in the most recent Email Agency Buyer’s Guide from analyst firm The Relevancy Group, with Trendline receiving top honors in strategy and analytics, and Inbox Marketer receiving the highest scores...
With 2019 already in full swing, we've compiled a list of our top-read articles from last year. Check them out below to see what others were reading and how they improved their email programs in 2018.
1
What is a Deliverability Audit?
A deliverability audit takes time. It’s thorough and requires ample analysis. Read more about what should be looked at in your email program and how Trendline can help.
2
Optimize Before You Strategize
Read about how our Operations Consultants at Trendline help enterprise clients transform their email marketing programs with an actionable strategy and uncover process efficiencies.
3
How Much Does it Cost to Hire An Email Marketing Agency?
Whether you go the retainer route or opt to work on a per-project basis, working with an agency is a highly collaborative endeavor. Read more about the benefits of an agency. Though email boasts the highest ROI of any digital channel, it only works when done correctly—and collaboratively.
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Get the Attention and Investment Your Email Program Deserves
I spend a lot of time speaking at conferences and events, which gives me the opportunity to talk with email marketers across the country. While the cities may change, I often hear a similar refrain: I’m understaffed and undervalued. People in my organization give very little attention to the email program. Every year I am continually tasked with growing lists and the program while budgets remain flat and patience amongst stakeholders wears thin.
Email has been around for so long that there’s a perception that it’s easy — that it just chugs along without much oversight. The reality is that email marketing is the offensive line and without it other parts of the marketing department don’t shine. Whether it’s 5,000, 5 million or 50 million people, email has a huge influence on your brand. So how do you get people to understand that without a stellar offensive line, the quarterback can’t pass, the...
Fear & Placement Go Hand In Hand
One of the greatest fears for organizations that have a substantial email program is that of list attrition and stagnated growth in the subscriber base. List attrition happens when subscribers issue a spam complaint, their addresses bounce, or they “naturally” unsubscribe. A “natural” unsubscribe occurs when the subscriber takes the time to find the link, clicks on it, and proceeds with whatever unsubscribe process the company has put into place.
Companies view the unsubscribe as a threat and a failure to the long-term viability of the program. Truth be told, some companies are just plain scared of subscribers leaving their list, because someone in the organization believes that bigger lists are better. Over the years, the common practice by organizations is to place the unsubscribe link at or towards the bottom of the email. Some make it clearly visible while others find ways to hide it, either in the legalese, via a smaller font, or,...
It seems that people have been preaching the testing thing for quite a while now and Trendline is in complete agreement with a majority of the crowd when it comes to testing. In fact, as an agency, we have seen some sizable gains in our customers KPI’s when a disciplined and doable test plan is adhered to. Once an organization gets to see positive results of creating and executing against a test plan, they literally become addicted (in a good way) to wanting to always beat the new control. However, there are some organizations that struggle on just where to start. If you are one of them…..read on.
A basic and effective test calendar is as hard as you want to make it. However, there are four elements that should be included in even the most basic of calendars.
A Hypothesis
The first step to building a beneficial testing calendar is clearly defining what you’re hoping to learn and achieve for each test....
Top 10 Things Marketing Automation Customers Need To Know about Email Deliverability
1. You’re probably not alone on your IP address
Since the volume of email sent by B2B marketers is often much lower than retailers or other B2C sites, marketing automation providers often spread the usage of their Email IP addresses across multiple clients. As a matter of fact, most marketing automation subscriptions default to a shared IP. Consider checking with your provider on the costs associated with a dedicated IP address for your company, otherwise, your deliverability could be impacted by the bad practices of the other companies on the same IP.
2. More volume is not always better
Major B2C ISPs and webmail providers publish the volumes that they accept on an hourly basis. Unfortunately, B2B senders don’t receive that information. Many B2B networks and mail servers can handle small volumes and don’t have dedicated mail server administrators. This makes it difficult to send a large amount of volume to these B2B networks....
Email has had a big year; The Los Angeles Times reported that Cyber Monday was the largest in history - more than $6 billion in online sales - and email played an important role.
This late in December, most of us have received a virtual onslaught of email from our favorite retailers attempting to get us to participate in the holiday fun. Consumers have come to expect it, but during the rest of the year, marketers wonder whether they’re sending the right amount of emails.
In recent years much has been written about email frequency and the ideal number of emails that organizations should send. In a perfect world, the real answer is that you should send as often as your subscribers allow you to send to them.
In reality, though, we have no evidence or best practice for how much email a particular subscriber is willing to accept. That’s because so many variables are involved.
How did subscribers opt-in?...
Dear Email Marketers,
First and foremost, congratulations on surviving another year in email marketing. By now you should be mid-way thru the holiday madness and in the planning/budgeting stages for your 2018 email program.
No doubt you have read trend predictions for 2018 by some of the smartest minds in our industry. Rather than regurgitate the same stuff, I felt it might be better for me to ask you for a big favor in 2018.
It’s a frank and honest ask. I would like you to commit to adding ONE new thing to your email program next year.
I don’t mean doing something small, like making an interactive email or doing subject-line testing in Q2. Instead, I am asking you to commit to something monumental that could deliver a big impact.
Let me unpack what I mean by “monumental.” I am not talking about pie-in-the-sky stuff like integrating a super-dee-duper AI-driven neural-network decision-making engine which will integrate easily with your ESP...
To start the year on a good note, catch errors and identify opportunities for optimization via a thorough audit of your email marketing program.
It's common to use the beginning of the year to look back at what you've achieved in the past year or to plan for what you wish to accomplish in the next 12 months. But one shouldn’t forget the present, either. Taking a look at how things are running right now is also worthwhile.
In the hustle and bustle of campaign planning, creation, and execution, it’s easy to lose track of all the moving parts of your email program – particularly those parts that can go awry if they are not carefully monitored. To avoid such issues, here is an email audit checklist to help you start the year off right:
1. Infrastructure
Your infrastructure is bulletproof and unchanging, in theory. In the real world, mistakes happen and errors can creep into any setup. New campaigns, new platforms, and system...
*This is a support article that provides insight into our latest whitepaper, Measuring the Impact of Innovation in Email Marketing.
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Remember when the marketing-technology landscape looked like this?
That was back in 2011 when we thought we were living in complex times.
Here's the landscape today, with 5,000+ logos on the board:
Look at all those companies, ready to solve every marketing problem, from acquisition to retention, from onboarding to loyalty, from extracting every bit of data possible to using it to make messaging more timely and relevant.
So, we're all at the top of our games, right?
Marketers should be leveraging the insights and efficiencies promised by these mar-tech innovations to drive measurable and demonstrable business results.
But most aren't. Because they can't. Marketers everywhere are struggling with two major issues that compete against each other:
More pressure than ever on marketers to show and improve marketing results while justifying each financial decision.
Too many marketers don't use analytics to drive decision-making because...
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