I’ve written on my blog, Only Once, about how much I love my Board. Well, I’m pleased to announce I have a new reason to love it – today, I’m officially welcoming Jeff Epstein to the Return Path Board of Directors. He is joining an all-star cast that includes Greg Sands, Fred Wilson, Brad Feld, Scott Weiss and Scott Petry. I first met Jeff back in 2000 when, as CFO of DoubleClick, he... Continue »

Congratulations to Return Path’s Joshua Baer, named Austin’s Community Leader of the Year by the Entrepreneur Foundation of Central Texas. If you know Josh (and if you’ve so much as passed through the email or Austin technology community, you do) you’ll have a hard time coming up with anyone more deserving of this title. He’s a sought-after advisor to startups and young companies, the creative... Continue »

All of our jobs are all in real danger. The email channel and even online marketing as we know it are facing serious threats, and not necessarily from forces hostile to marketing. I’m entering my second year as chairman of the Direct Marketing Association, and GetResponse’s Jim Ducharme asked a question that reminded me of this during last week’s Email Evolution Conference in Miami Beach. “What’s... Continue »

Last year I made a handful of unpredictions – things that I don’t expect to happen in the coming year. (You can see how I did here.) Because there’s been so much development in email during the past year and a host of innovations are quietly changing the email landscape, I wanted to include some predictions this time around based on ideas that I think will have a serious impact on 2013. Here they... Continue »

I made four unpredictions for last year – things I didn’t think would happen. I always feel compelled to look back and evaluate my foresight, which in some years has been pretty good. This was one of them: 1. ISPs will not block messages to all users based on lack of engagement, but engagement will matter more than ever. The reckoning: I hedged this one a bit, but no question it came... Continue »