E-mail marketing is not enough. You need to supplement it with old-fashioned, hard-copy postal mail. Tangible, direct and targeted, mail still has a valuable, strong pull.

Defined very generally, behavioral economics combines psychology and economics to identify why people make certain decisions about purchasing, borrowing, lending, etc. In her article, "The Gift Card Economy" ('The Atlantic', May 2009), Virginia Postrel turns to behavioral economists to shed light on factors that have been shown to affect consumer spending.

We are constantly inundated with the concept that the Internet is creating a global community — a world marketplace where goods and services can be marketed and purchased anywhere. In the past, when direct mail was the primary means of direct marketing, a key component of strategy was the use of geographical targeting. But does geographical targeting still make sense in the world of online marketing? There are two reasons why the answer is, "Yes."

How are your e-mail programs performing? Typically, when I ask a client this question their response is, "Well, our open rate is X, and our click rate is Y." If this is your typical response, it's time to up your game.

Ted's Montana Grill, a national restaurant chain founded by Ted Turner and restaurateur George McKerrow Jr., needed to redefine and rejuvenate an e-mail program filled with potential and eager subscribers. We helped Ted's develop a VIP-type e-mail program where value and benefits resonated with subscribers.

Anyone trying to send an electronic message to another person right now must make a very important decision: Through which vehicle do I want to use to send my message?

Segmenting your list and personalizing the e-mail content will drive better returns than blasting the entire list with the same message, but it can entail a lot of work with uncertain rewards.

Abandoned carts cost e-commerce sites big dollars in lost sales. In fact, industry studies show that the average cart abandonment rate is between 50% and 60%, which means that more than half of the customers who begin the checkout process on your site fail to complete the purchase.

In these tough economic times, marketers are challenged to do a great deal more with less. One way to do this is to focus on giving current customers the best possible price at the best possible times in the purchasing lifecycle. To effectively target, track and deploy special offers, it's time to turn to our dear old friend, the inbox.

A number of changes across the e-mail landscape over the last six months are adding up to a seismic shift in how we think about e-mail, communications and marketing.