About Jay

As Director of Strategic Services, Jay is responsible for collaborating with our clients to provide guidance in the planning and optimization of email programs and integration with emerging social and mobile channels. From small business to non-profit to working with Fortune 100 companies, he has seen enough to tell a few good stories.

[INFOGRAPHIC] Ignore Android subscribers at your own risk

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Jay

I’ve written recently about how I’ve gone a bit ‘goo-goo’ over Google, parting ways with my iPhone and entering the Android world. As one might expect, the user experience is quite different. Not better or worse – just different.

First, let’s consider the iPhone email experience. It is very homogenous (by design) and so it’s not hard to understand the user experience – from screen size to finger gestures to HTML rendering behaviors.

The Android smartphone world is a stark contrast. Continue Reading

O Android, Where Art Thou?

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Jay

The latest IDC predictions for global smartphone marketshare continue to point to an Android-dominated market. Whether you look at today’s numbers or the numbers in 2016, Android smartphones outnumber iPhones 3-to-1.

Let me try to phrase this statistic in a couple different ways (that I’d hypothesize to be at least directionally accurate) in ways that may resonate a little better for marketers:

1. For every iPhone user that you’ve found through Litmus (or any other method) to be reading your emails, there is at least one Android user reading that email as well.The October comScore numbers provide good support for this theory. Continue Reading

Email: Meet Search. Search: Meet Gmail.

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Jay

I just returned from speaking about the New Inbox: Email + Mobile + Social at SES SF for the first time. For a conference that was primarily about search engine optimization, there were a couple of really interesting gems I walked away with.

One of the coolest things was being able to hear Matt Cutts(@mattcutts), head of Google’s Search Quality team, speaking about how his global team has to fight “Web Spam.” Google (the proper noun turned verb) was taking a lot of heat/questions around whether Google+ really had influence on search ranking (Cutts denied this) among other SEO-related issues. Immediately, I felt like a closer cousin to the search marketers in the room. Continue Reading

The Rise of the Microbrand and the Humanity of Relationship Marketing

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Jay

Dollar Shave Club

Thanks to a recent TNW article, I’m officially fascinated and rooting for the rise of microbrands: online-only retailers like Dollar Shave Club, Everlane and other specialty brands that consumers can engage and do business with directly without bricks, mortars or middlemen.

Microbrands are the antidote to the megabrand and typically promise to make our lives easier (delivering to our doorstep for free) and to save us money on products that are of equal or higher quality than what we’d get at a mall or department store. Continue Reading

Gmail’s Ascension and Why Email Marketers Need to Pay Attention

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Jay

I recently switched from an iPhone 4 to an Android smartphone (HTC One X) and, as you’d expect, my attention has been naturally gravitating towards more Google-related news and technology. Slowly, but surely, I’ve been discovering and delving into Google’s mobile app family experience, especially Gmail.

At Google I/O, it was announced that Gmail now had 425 million users worldwide. Numbers have yet to be released this year for Yahoo! and Hotmail, but based upon reported numbers over the past few years*, Gmail’s ascension is undeniable. Continue Reading

Will You Be an Email VIP in an iOS 6 World?

Posted on June 12, 2012 by Jay

Brand marketers – bad news – you may never achieve VIP status among your iOS-based subscribers.

Among the 200 new features coming with iOS 6, Apple has put some new meaning into naming someone as a VIP (Very Important Person, for you youngsters out there) – they get a special star designation that is sourced from the contact/address book on a person-by-person basis.

Yes – it looks and feels like Google’s Gmail Priority Inbox. Google tried to make itself (or its algorithms) smart enough to implicitly interpret and translate email engagement in order to “prioritize” a sender’s email on your behalf. Continue Reading

Chapter Two: BrightWave

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Jay

I am beyond excited to begin the second chapter of my working life in Atlanta at BrightWave Marketing. The two questions being asked of me is, “What will you be doing at BrightWave?” and “Why BrightWave?”

Great questions. Let me try and provide answers while sharing some insight about the milestones and events of Chapter One that set the table for Chapter Two.

Chapter One probably actually started when I married my better half in 2001. From the day we said ‘I do,’ she was telling me how great it could be to live in Atlanta (she grew up in Columbus, GA and went to Emory). Continue Reading

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