Journal
Blog
New to the vocabulary? Start with the CRM glossary.
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Lifecycle & retention ·
A peak season pre-flight checklist
With weeks to go before Black Friday, the work that decides peak week is technical, not creative. The freeze list, the volume ramp, the caps and the rehearsal.
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CRM strategy ·
Choosing between email, push and SMS for the same message
Urgency, consent and cost decide the channel, not habit. A working rule set for picking email, push or SMS, and for capping frequency across all three at once.
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Industry notes ·
RCS arrives on iPhone: what CRM teams should do about it
Apple is adding RCS in iOS 18. What that actually changes for messaging programmes, why business messaging is a separate question, and why SMS stays the fallback.
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Lifecycle & retention ·
A welcome series that earns the second purchase
Most welcome series are built to close a first order and stop there. How to design and measure one whose actual job is bringing a new customer back a second time.
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Data & personalisation ·
Rebuilding CRM reporting after Universal Analytics
Universal Analytics is gone and the GA4 interface was never built for lifecycle questions. How we rebuild CRM reporting on the raw warehouse export instead.
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Data & personalisation ·
A preference centre people actually fill in
How to turn the preference centre from a compliance page into a retention surface: which options to offer, which questions to ask, and how to make the answers change what sends.
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Industry notes ·
Chrome keeps third-party cookies: what changes for CRM
Google will not switch off third-party cookies in Chrome after all. Why that is a reprieve for adtech rather than for CRM, and which first-party work still pays.
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Testing & optimisation ·
Life after the open rate
Apple's image pre-fetching broke the open rate and the new sender rules replaced it. What to measure instead, and how to rebuild reports, segments and tests around it.
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Platforms & implementation ·
Moving DMARC from p=none to p=reject without losing mail
A staged route from p=none to p=reject: read the aggregate reports first, find every system that sends as your domain, fix alignment, then tighten the policy.
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Lifecycle & retention ·
A suppression routine that keeps complaint rate down
The suppression sets every email programme needs, how to write a sunset policy as a ladder rather than a switch, and how to run the whole routine on a schedule.
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Platforms & implementation ·
The Gmail and Yahoo sender rules, three months in
What the February bulk sender requirements actually broke inside established email programmes, and the authentication, unsubscribe and complaint work that fixed it.
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Platforms & implementation ·
Navigating the Data Lakehouse: Strategies for Implementing Databricks for Enterprise Success
Six strategies for a Databricks rollout that holds up: data strategy first, then scale, governance, training, engineering practice and cross-team work.