Are you getting the most from your e-mail marketing campaigns? The following questions will help you out. How do you welcome new subscribers to your program? Keep new subscribers out of your regular communication stream.

Kaizen has been a buzzword in the corporate world for decades. It's a Japanese philosophy of continuous, incremental improvement and is engrained in the cultures of top companies like Toyota. Volumes have been written on this subject, but simply taken on its surface it's very powerful and inspiring.

E-mail service providers (ESPs) are getting more and more hands on with their clients. Whether it is CheetahMail focusing on its client services, or e-Dialog detailing its role in strategy for each and every e-mail campaign, it seems like the ESP is becoming more like an ad agency for e-mail. Following this note, this week StrongMail Systems UK has announced a new branch of its company called StrongMail Strategic Services.

When e-mail marketing began, the possibilities of reaching new audiences through electronic means and getting real time results made marketers absolutely giddy. Today, many of those marketers find themselves wondering why they can't raise their conversion rates. That's because those marketers define e-mail as a contact strategy rather than a key piece of the overall interactive marketing strategy. While e-mail by itself remains effective, its uses have evolved. Marketers need to think of it as one tool in an arsenal that leverages other tools and disciplines to make it more effective.

Maybe it's all the back-to-school advertisements I've encountered the past month or so, but I thought it would be fun to give a quick refresher course on email deliverability. There has been a lot of discussion on the subject in the past, and I wanted to share some important suggestions to help you receive an A+ in your e-mail marketing campaigns.

With explosive growth of social media sites also has been a rise in intra-network communication, a growing alternative to personal e-mail. Our experts debate the effect on marketing.

Over the past few years, there has been a lot of consolidation in the e-mail space. Acxiom acquired Digital Impact in 2005, and Experian acquired CheetahMail in 2004.

E-mail has always been an effective hook, but recently, use of e-mail first hand got me both hooked and sold. I am reminded and humbled of the tangible benefits of leveraging what we know as we decide how to implement and execute our marketing strategies.

As e-mail marketing usage grows, so does its benefits. Marketers now use e-mail as part of their business-to-business and business-to-consumer integrated marketing mix, as most recipients accept and even welcome targeted, opt-in e-mails.

In the spirit of Halloween, Universal Studios theme parks in Hollywood and Florida have transformed the park's attractions into haunted houses featuring Freddy Krueger, Jason and the Texas Chainsaw family. Beyond scaring their clientele, Universal is using the Halloween Horror Nights event for e-mail newsletter registrations.