• The Mythology of Modeling
  Statistical models are not bad. In fact, they can be quite helpful. But you have to view them with the same vigor you would look at other aspects of your marketing programs. That way you can see your modelers not as someone whose stare can paralyze you, but someone with an interesting way of looking at you...
  (tags: database_marketing statistics data-modeling)
• Hitting the inbox with valuable e-mail
  Transactional e-mails will show the sharpest growth over the next several years, and with good reason. When asked which type of e-mail they find “most worth reading,” the largest group of respondents, 64%, cited transactional messages such as order confirmations, according to a report from Borrell Associates Inc. with data from Merkle Inc.
  (tags: transactional_emails study)
• Can List Rentals & Swaps Be Ethical & Effective in the Future? Bronto Weighs In
  (tags: list_rental)
• Protect Your List: How to Fight 3 Internal Battles over Email Strategy
  In this article, MarketingSherpa outlines how to fight key battles over email frequency, list-building strategies, and infrastructure.
  (tags: list_management frequency)
• Do you collect too much data?
  85% of UK email marketers collect personal data they don’t use. These marketers are putting off people (how many abandoned filling out the sign-up form because of all the mandatory fields?) and are wasting opportunities to use the information to good affect in crafting personalised emails to subscribers.
  (tags: list_building)

The folks over at Campaign Monitor have been hard at work overhauling their CSS guide.

The new guide now includes the following updates.

• Mobile email clients – they took the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Palm Pre and Palm Treo for a spin. 
• Focus on the most popular clients - the web-based version of the report focuses on the 10 most popular email clients. The downloadable version of the guide includes the results for all 23 email clients tested.
• CSS shorthand – they tested the shorthand support for the font, background,padding, margin and border properties.
• Smarter grouping - Instead of listing all CSS properties alphabetically, they're now grouping them into categories like "text and fonts" and "color and background" to make it easier to see related properties and find what you're looking for.
• Partial support indicated - Email clients like Outlook 2007 offer partial support for some properties such as margin. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Traditionally they've listed this as no support, but they now indicate partial support to let you know it might require more testing.

Check out and download the all new CSS Guide.

• The Reality of Comcast Deliverability
  (tags: comcast deliverability)
• Resources for Your Email Marketing Education
  If you're ready to start learning or take your program to the next level, check out Loren McDonald's list of email resources to bookmark, download, read, buy or attend. -- Thanks for mentioning this blog and the Email Marketer's Club, Loren! :-)
  (tags: getting_started)

• Reebok's Preference Center
  Reebok’s site is not run of the mill or typical in any way, especially their sign up process. Since they make sporting equipment for a variety of athletic endeavors, they give the users the option to scale up or down their interest in a specific sport.
  (tags: cases preference_centers)

• MySpace Introduces Mail and Enlists Return Path to Help Keep Those New Inboxes Spam-Free
  The new @myspace.com mail service will be integrated with the Return Path Blacklist to keep out spam, phishing scams and other junk. They will also be implementing Return Path Certification to make sure that MySpace members get the email they request...
  (tags: deliverability myspace)
• New Delivery tools
  A couple nifty new delivery tools were published over the weekend.
  (tags: deliverability tools)
• Designing an Email Newsletter: One Column vs. Two Columns
  One column or two columns? That’s one of the questions you need to ask yourself when designing an email newsletter. Should you present your information in one column of stacked content or two columns with the second column usually being a narrower sidebar. There’s no easy answer. Both formats have their advantages so your choice will depend on content, platform and audience preferences.
  (tags: design)

• Pan European Email Marketing Benchmark - Attention ESP's and marketers invitations going out soon - be sure to get yours
  (tags: study)

• What is Email Integration?
  Great article by John Caldwell about email marketing & data integration
  (tags: integration)
• Testing, testing....
  Email is perhaps the single best platform for marketing testing ever invented. You can design a test, then see the results in minutes or days, versus the weeks and months necessary to evaluate a traditional direct mail test. It also costs almost nothing to test, versus the hundreds of thousands of dollars necessary to test using over the air media. If you code the test up right, you can evaluate the results not only in an instant, but over a course of campaigns. So why is it that so many marketers don't take advantage of such a powerful tool?
  (tags: testing)
• Spam judgment not covered by insurance
  Check out this video featuring "high volume email deployer" Scott Richter over on Laura's blog - it's HILARIOUS! :-)
  (tags: spam)