"Unsubscribe" is a touchy word in e-mail marketing. No marketer really wants to lose subscribers, but then again, most marketers don't want to have uninterested people on their list. And, since the CAN-SPAM update this year has ruled that the unsubscribe process must be easier for consumers, cutting the process down to a one-stop process, not everyone has gotten with it.

In the online marketing space, it's survival of the fittest. You have to stay on top of trends while correctly forecasting the likelihood of their staying power.

With all the changes happening in the magazine world, it's no longer surprising to see 15 new stories a day about closings, cutbacks, new hires and launches across the industry. What has been eye-catching in the past few weeks has been the number of cutbacks affecting titles aimed at male readers.

Trademark bidding is a debated search strategy in which one company bids on its competitors' name or trademarked terms in pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. Google search "Ford F-150," and ads for Toyota Tundra appear in addition to Ford.

Until the 2008 election campaign, politics was considered "cover death," a subject avoided rather than gravitated toward, at the celebrity weekly newsstand. Although President-elect Obama's coverage in the major newspapers and newsweeklies was important to his success, it was his presence in publications that speak to the under-30 set — such as Us Weekly and Rolling Stone magazines — that helped establish him as the favored candidate among young voters across the nation.

Old catalogs can have useful ideas for today's catalogers. Leo Burnett once said of good advertising, "Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read." Catalogs that do this can still define and transform brands, engage and reassure customers and create buzz.

When it comes to properly targeting your marketing mes­sage, understanding your audience — what it wants to know, how it wants to hear what it wants to know — is essential. So the first word that comes to mind when I think of the Motrin/Twitter mayhem of last week is "oy" — the traditional Yiddish term of dismay.

With postal and production costs rising and more consumers looking to online, some say that direct mail may be nearing its end as an effective marketing tool — but others disagree.

As the Web plays an increasingly strategic role in customer engagement, marketers are scrambling to better understand, measure and act upon information gleaned from this medium. It has been well-documented that we are in the midst of an information explosion, and the Internet has served as its fuse. Amidst the bits of data that companies try to reassemble on an ongoing basis, perhaps no area has proved as vexing as that of the data generated from the Web.

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.