Every Thursday night is "date night" at my house, which means that the nanny stays an extra hour so my wife and I can go out to dinner without the kids. This week we ended up at a chain restaurant at the local mall. After dinner, we strolled through the mall. As I've recently been re-reading one of my all-time favorite marketing books -Robert Cialdini's "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" - I quickly noticed that virtually every "trick" of influence in Cialdini's book was being used by stores in the mall. And of course, I also realized that all of …

In case you haven't heard, email is dead. In fact, it's died several times. You could call it the cat of digital marketing, working its way through its nine lives. And it's not alone. Search has died more than a few times. Display was DOA over a decade ago, and has resurrected itself, only to suffer several more untimely demises. In fact, for any digital channel you might care to mention, I can probably find an obituary.