Does an Email Service Provider tell you they have "great deliverability"? Here's what that really means.

Chris Marriott outlines an approach that marketers can use to evaluate and refresh the contents of their emails.

An unsubscribe deserves high praise, because of three clear benefits: proper analysis of unsubscribe patterns identifies problems with your email program, an unsubscribe helps you retain the subscriber (really) and an unsubscribe is an opportunity to impress.

Everyone seems to agree that your unsubscribe link should be prominent and always included in your email administrative footer. Whether to place it at or near the top of your emails generates more "it depends" answers than disagreements among industry experts.

"We’ve been seeing a wide range of approaches to retail store messaging in email. Here are some noteworthy tactics to try"

How you track emails can spell the difference between having an email marketing channel that can be easily condensed into broad reports (i.e. monthly sales numbers) with campaigns that can easily be tracked separately (i.e. comparing this week’s email to last week’s) vs. a disorganized system that takes time to organize or condense into meaningful metrics.

Nobody wants to be a spammer. Yet a growing number of social networkers are increasingly spamming their “friends” or “followers” with shameless unsolicited plugs for their blog, book, business or whatever.

Best practice and brand guidelines are a great place to start with your email design but eye tracking can give you a true understanding of how your readers read and interact with your email.

"email is resilient in this recession as the channel still inspired 41% of consumers to make at least one online purchase. Additionally, consumer attitudes demonstrate that they are now more likely to respond to ads with coupons and sign up for email promotions than they were when the economy was strong"