The MessageGears marketing console is an enterprise Java application that connects directly to Customer data sources to allow our users to segment users and personalize messages. Traditionally, we have leveraged JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) drivers to standardize connectivity to dozens of traditional and modern databases, which work well across nearly any standard data source and give us the flexibility to connect to dozens of customer data stores.

Today, however, MessageGears now fully integrates with the Google BigQuery API to support faster and more efficient data transfer to power our Segment, Message, and Engage products.

When it comes to email marketing, consumer expectations have never been higher for personalization, or for data privacy. If you think this seems like a paradox, you may be right. The very customer data that enables you to send the types of highly tailored content your customers crave can also make your brand seem creepy if you cross the line for any individual on your list. It can seem like a losing battle, though, for some, to the point that some brands almost give up entirely, sending bulk mailings that don’t stand out in today’s crowded inbox. So what’s the solution?

In our recent webinar, email industry veteran Angela Vega (Senior Marketing Manager, Vrbo) revealed five key guidelines that can help you deliver content your customers will love (and that will lead them to buy) while respecting the security of their data at the same time. Here’s a look at those guidelines and how each can contribute to managing the tricky personalization vs. privacy balance.

With COVID-19 temporarily changing the lives of everyone across the world, people are on edge as the crisis unfolds. Unlike so many disasters of the past, this time there isn’t anyone who isn’t impacted.

It’s a sad reality that major events like this happen often — pandemics, hurricanes, earthquakes, violence, terrorism, etc. — and we as marketers can be so involved in our day-to-day operations that we lose sight of the fact that each email we send (even if it’s sent as part of a larger automated program) lands in the inbox of a real person the crisis is impacting. And, even if they’re not directly impacted in some cases, they may be sensitive to certain content. It’s not hard to spot when a brand isn’t showing empathy toward those affected, and that can turn anybody off.

Recently, we published an update to the research we had conducted concerning the marketing messaging trends among the world’s Super Senders as the world came to grips with COVID-19. Now, after a month of continued self-isolation and quarantine in many places around the world, we wanted to take another look at the larger trends of email sending and interaction to see how marketers were reacting to the prolonged fight against the virus. Key questions for this analysis were:

• What are the volume trends for email over 2020? Can we observe some sort of stability or continuing trend?
• What kinds of mailings are being sent? Do we see a shift in marketing campaigns vs. triggered messages?
• How are recipients interacting with mailings? Now that many people are staying at home for much of the day, will that affect interaction?

To perform the analysis, we reviewed billions of delivered emails since the beginning of the year. All times displayed are in Eastern time for ease of visualization, and all volumes are relative.

Last week, I wrote about our new product, Segment, and how it enables marketers to effectively segment, enhance, and export their data. This week I’ll continue the discussion of Segment, but I’d like to give a more detailed look at our design and architecture of the product and why our solution is able to support the needs of the modern marketer.