• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 8, 2008

Email Insider Summit Cocktail Reception, Park City, Utah
December 9, 2008

You get a special treat with today's JAOLM!  David Goetzl is in Park City, Utah, keeping track of all those Email Insiders at MediaPost's Email Insider Summit.  I'll be back tomorow, maybe... - Kelly

The weather outside wasn't particularly frightful, but it was absolutely delightful Sunday night at the opening reception of the Email Insider Summit in Park City. With a postcard-perfect fireplace and holiday decorations as a backdrop, marketers caught up with old friends and made new ones at the exquisite Stein Eriksen Lodge.

Locals -- Utahns (not Utahans) -- might be concerned that wintry weather has been slow in coming. But for a visitor, it's not half bad when temps hit 50 degrees between mountain peaks in December. Needless to say, there was plenty of room in the coat closet at the welcome reception.

Still, there were two gathering storms as the merriment took place. A coming snowfall was finally expected to dump unknown inches on the slopes outside the Lodge (wow!), while the email marketing business, of course, hasn't been immune to the economic downhill (whoa!).

The frozen-sugar prospect had Bill Broadbent, CEO of Instinct Marketing, hinting that he might not be seen in every session at the Summit. "I'll play a little bit of hooky," he said impishly.

With his baseball cap and Elvis Costello glasses, Broadbent looked primed to return to Park City next month for the Sundance Film Festival. Of course, he doesn't mind a romantic drama.

His company helps dating services (online and off) with lead generation and he's a 25-year veteran of the matchmaking business, founding Perfect Match before the Internet boom. As the Web began to revolutionize meeting and greeting, he tried to buy the PerfectMatch.com domain name. But a plumbing company owned it and refused to sell. (A separate entrepreneurial group was able to get hold of it later.)

While Broadbent was eager to put on skis, Ketan Bonjara, the business development head at Iconix, was looking more indoors. A chairlift ride would have to be with someone who could deliver a big account. "I love skiing," he said. "But if it gets in the way of networking, I'm not going to do it."

Amy Chubbock, a senior account executive at Knotice, said the slopes aren't likely to be on her schedule either. "Does rolling down the hill count?" she asked laughing. She's only been skiing once - at home in Akron, Ohio -- where the slopes are decidedly less troublesome than the Park City runs used in the 2002 Olympics.

Who knew Akron was a resort? It actually has not one, but two ski areas. "Right now, we have more snow than they do here," Chubbock said.

Chubbuck recently joined Knotice after working at Malone Advertising in Akron, where one of her accounts was Nestle. But she said the performance metrics in the email marketing arena attracted her. "I like how accountable (it is)," she said. "I find it absolutely fascinating." Chubbock hobnobbed Sunday evening with Mike Ferguson of SubscriberMail, who said he's hoping the conference will yield some insight into how email marketing and the burgeoning social media field can play off one another. Brad Nash of Hotels.com also mentioned the email-social media nexus as a point of interest. "As young people get older and older, how do we adapt to them?" he said.

There have been suggestions that SMS offers a marketing platform to reach younger demos, but Nash said that remains to be seen. "It's such a private thing," he said of text messaging. "If you do it wrong, you can greatly tarnish your brand. You have to tread lightly."

Nash said he expects to try his hand at skiing this week. But Jay DeFoore, director of email marketing at The Knot, said he was largely out of luck. He's a snowboarder and the Deer Valley area is one of only three resorts in the U.S. that has a strict ban on sliding down that way.

Separately, DeFoore said he wasn't overly worried about how the economy would affect his company in the months ahead -- "brides are going to get married no matter what." But of course, if advertisers do pull back widely, that would be an issue. As far as email marketing strategies, he said success lies in not sending out more messages, but "smarter" ones.

Regarding the next few days of panels and talks, DeFoore, a former reporter for Photo District News, said: "If I can walk out of here with a couple of ideas I can put in place in 2009, it'll be worth it."

Another former reporter now in email marketing, Veronica Combs of the Health Central Network, said she's also found that less can be more when it comes to email frequency. In that sense - protecting the consumer from a barrage - she said colleagues have taken to referring to her as "the audience advocate."

Less can also be more when it comes to subject lines. She said they should have 40 characters or less -- and a verb.

Dino Michetti, a vice president at Epsilon, was buzzing at the reception about how he was watching the recent Batman film, "The Dark Knight," on his plane from New York and lo and behold, Aaron Eckhart, who played Two-Face, came walking down the aisle.

Attending the event with his wife Donna, Michetti referenced the economic downslide, but seemed more concerned about email marketers' continuing efforts to avoid spamming consumers. He said retailers like Target and Circuit City are beginning to realize they could have topped out in terms of the number of people they can add to their email lists. So, ensuring people don't unsubscribe en masse is critical to avoid the customer base shrinking drastically and permanently.

Karla Venell, who oversees email newsletters for General Mills, said the economy is playing a role as her company sends out meal and recipe suggestions. "We're often thinking about how we can provide lower-cost meal ideas," she said.

Still, General Mills may be better positioned for tough times ahead than other businesses. "We're in a much better place," Venell said, "because people still need to eat and they're eating more at home and going out less - but it's still an issue."

Still, amid all the charms of the ideal ski chalet Sunday, it all seemed downhill.

You were there and took pictures too?  Awesome, add them to the Flickr Group set (and tag 'em "2008 Email Insider Summit")