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George Adamidis

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Principal, Real Email Consulting

302 points

With more than a decade of Email and Online Marketing Experience, I have watched the space grow in both size and sophistication.

Starting with simple "batch and blast" campaigns, email is now the most targeted, personalized and relevant experience a ...

With more than a decade of Email and Online Marketing Experience, I have watched the space grow in both size and sophistication.

Starting with simple "batch and blast" campaigns, email is now the most targeted, personalized and relevant experience a marketer can provide to their customers.

I have helped dozens of marketers grow their online revenue and increase customer engagement and loyalty while reducing their costs, production timelines and unsubscribe / abandonment rates.

Get in touch to discover why dozens of world-class marketers have entrusted me with the development, strategy, measurement and optimization of their online marketing programs.

Ultimately, my goal is to help your organization exceed expectations for online marketing, and it is my pleasure to be at your service.

Specialties:
email program and strategy development, measurement and optimization of online marketing vehicles, development and analysis of marketing testing programs, client service, customer relationship management, marketing automation, account planning, translation of technical requirements into "layman's terms"

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May 16, 2012

George Adamidis and 9 other people answered this question

What would you consider to be a successful open rate for your email marketing campaigns?

I disagree with your points as to why an Open Rate can't be trusted as accurate.
Your first point - that images must load - is *mostly* true, but *most* email platforms will count an open if a link is clicked, regardless of image loading ... more

Email Marketing

Email Marketing Campaigns

Email Open Rate

Sept. 22, 2011

George Adamidis and 3 other people answered this question

What are you doing to activate inactive subscribers in your database?

The best thing to do is run a REACTIVATION campaign.
These campaigns take all of the inactive subscribers (usually, no email engagement in the past 3-6 months, depending on your email frequency) that have been subscribed for at least three months and provides an offer to ... more

Digital Marketing

Email Marketing

Sept. 22, 2011

George Adamidis and 2 other people answered this question

If you're following best practice in email, how valuable is being 'whitelisted'?

I have to call that increase into question. How is it being calculated?
To increase delivery 60%, you would have to have a dismal delivery rate to begin with. If you delivered at 50%, a 60% increase gets you to 80%, which is still a poor ... more

May 12, 2011

George Adamidis and 3 other people answered this question

Is there a "best day" for email marketers to reach consumers?

The studies quoted in the question are old, and for the most part people have moved away from the question because what works for one company will not necessarily work for others.
Perfect example - I managed a very large e-tailers Email program, and everyone was ... more

Email Marketing

Marketing Best Practices

Marketing Campaign Strategies

April 14, 2011

George Adamidis and 7 other people answered this question

What do you think of emails that are triggered as a result of your browse behavior?

What you're describing is what I call the "Happy Coincidence" email.
Works great for an abandoned cart, or browsing behavior.
If you simply send an email with an offer on a product that you know has interest, without saying how you know or even implying that you ... more

Email Marketing

Re-marketing Emails

April 14, 2011

George Adamidis and 4 other people answered this question

Welcome Emails.

Things I expect:
- that the marketer reinforce why I subscribed.
- that the marketer personalize if I provided them my information.
- that the marketer will confirm expectations on frequency and content.
- that the marketer will try to cross sell either product, services or other newsletters.
- that ... more

Email Marketing

April 5, 2011

George Adamidis and 7 other people answered this question

Epsilon and other ESP's being hacked

I think it will change how data is stored... right now, I am unaware of any email addresses being encrypted on hosted DBs, but maybe that will be the new thing.
Store encrypted email addresses, and decrypt on the MTA (or something along those lines). ... more

Information Technology

Email Marketing

March 19, 2011

George Adamidis answered this question

What are some email marketing tactics that you use to grow and strengthen your social networks?

I think the most common one is "Share with your Network" (SWYN)... however, some other ideas include:
- asking email readers to join your social network.
- if feasible, only ask those who are NOT in your social network to join it
- if feasible, pull in a ... more

Email Marketing

March 19, 2011

George Adamidis and 1 other person answered this question

Would you say that social media is dependent on email? Why or why not?

Dependent, yes.. but not necessarily essential. I'm sure there are success stories that are social network-only, but email plays a strong part for many.
For example, when an update occurs in FB, a notification is often deployed via email. Email is still the number means of ... more

March 19, 2011

George Adamidis and 2 other people answered this question

How can you use social media to drive people to email?

@Benjamin - certainly, people don't read all the email they receive, just like any other medium, social network updates included. If an email marketer does a smashing job on their email program, the percentage of those who do read the email will be very high.
Specific ... more

March 17, 2011

George Adamidis and 1 other person answered this question

Have you ever included video in your email marketing?

Yes, but it's always a still image with a link to a hosted video online.
Too many variables with video for it to work across the board, so I always recommend sending people to a website where the video is hosted. Specific to click throughs, I ... more

Email Marketing

Video Advertising

March 16, 2011

George Adamidis and 1 other person answered this question

Social sharing in email. Or SWYN When was the last you did it?

me personally? never.
I definitely have for clients, to ensure it works and to spread their gospel, but never because I was SO into a brand that I simply HAD to share. Of course, it could be geared toward a different audience (i.e., younger folk), or ... more

Email Marketing

March 12, 2011

George Adamidis and 6 other people answered this question

Email Expert Advice: How important is it?

I think what makes one an expert is the experiencing of being in the trenches, and seeing if the campaigns were successful or not. It's kind of like giving batting lessons without ever swinging a baseball bat.
Being a self-reported "email expert," I find the biggest ... more

Email Marketing

March 8, 2011

George Adamidis and 3 other people answered this question

How do you convince clients that "pinging" an email address is just plain bad!

The attempt is to validate their yet-to-be-mailed email addresses through pinging the recipient server.
Ultimately, it's not something I would ever recommend, so I was wondering what others thought on the methodology. more

Email Marketing Database

Email Marketing Marketing

March 5, 2011

George Adamidis and 11 other people answered this question

Will email REALLY be replaced by texting and communication through social media sites?

as I often say, no one "owns" email... it's a universal protocol.
however, someone "owns" facebook and twitter and others, so they can do whatever they'd like -- such as change privacy policies, add services, remove services and so on.
also, people prefer business use email to ... more

Technology Development

March 4, 2011

George Adamidis and 11 other people answered this question

Email Marketing: What is the worst thing you have ever done in email marketing?

Great question, Andrew.
Having worked in email since 1999, I've seen some pretty bad mistakes happen... which have thankfully led to a number of safeguards at the major ESPs I have worked with.
I offer two following examples (out of dozens I could share over a drink ... more

Email Best Practices

Email Marketing

March 4, 2011

George Adamidis and 3 other people answered this question

Define email expert for me?

in a word? me!
kidding aside, the notes above speak to "expert" in general.
an "email expert" is well versed in: subscription best practices, deliverability best practices, authentication protocols + legal issues, content best practices, strategy, testing and program development... all across a number of verticals and ... more

Email Marketing

March 3, 2011

George Adamidis is now following Andrew Kordek

March 3, 2011

George Adamidis and 7 other people answered this question

What's wrong if someone buys email list from a vendor like us?

I think one of the biggest factors why this is so heavily frowned upon is that people want to equate postal mail with email.
email is different than postal mail because as an email recipient you pay to receive email through fees to an ISP. with ... more

Email Marketing

March 2, 2011

George Adamidis and 4 other people answered this question

Email Marketing: View on Mobile Device.

Great question, Andrew!
I have a client that wants me to publish "rules" for email on mobile, so I'd love to hear what folks on the brand side think. So, being a little selfish, I'm adding my comment to "subscribe me" :-) more

Information Technology

Email Marketing

Feb. 18, 2011

George Adamidis and 5 other people answered this question

How many of you track your unsubscribes on a per source basis?

@Scott -- I think I'm missing something here.
Could one not simply take the list of unsubscribes and run that against the listed source in the Email DB? If the data was available via FBL, I imagine it was available via unsubscribes.
Or, are you saying that ... more

Email Marketing

Email Unsubscribers

Feb. 16, 2011

George Adamidis and 5 other people answered this question

What three things should every email include?

Jim -
First and foremost, per the example, remember that a reactivation campaign is sent only to subscribers who have not engaged in email for many months - usually a minimum a 6 months.
That said, the risk of impacting your delivery, reputation or even being ... more

Feb. 4, 2011

George Adamidis and 1 other person answered this question

Goodmail Systems announces they are "ceasing operations." What went wrong?

some thoughts on my experience with GM:
- it was too expensive.
- it slowed down mail delivery.
- it was difficult to integrate the token-append process into email platforms.
- ultimately, they do not own the inbox; GM had to rely too heavily on ISPs. more

Email Campaigns

Email Marketing

Feb. 4, 2011

George Adamidis and 2 other people answered this question

If email is the highest converting channel, why is it the least talked about?

two thoughts:
- email is ubiquitous, so everyone thinks they know how it works.
- email is no longer the new kid on the block. more

Email Marketing

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