As I love to say, we marketers have a tendency to rely on intuition and experience to get us by. Assuming we don't have enough resources to make empirical data decisions and prove everything through a deep dive into data, how might we convince our organization to look at things differently and make decisions?

We've all been reading a great deal about email rendering these days and the direct impact this issue has on a mailer's brand, delivery, reputation and performance. However, as so often happens with the issue "du jour," good information is often paired with bad, as everyone jumps on the bandwagon to capitalize on the latest hot topic.

The CMO of a major luxury apparel retailer said to me the other day, "I get email five times a week from major brands like Saks, Nordstrom and even Dell. We govern ours to no more than twice per week per subscriber. Am I the idiot?" I responded, "Have you got something interesting to send them five times a week?" Of course his answer was, "Not always." Which, unfortunately, is true of a lot of the daily email programs we receive, isn't it?

Dear Email Diva: This past fall, due to a programming glitch, our vendor emailed up to 40 copies of two of our messages to about 12,000 people on our opt-in list. Needless to say there was tremendous fallout, resulting in a 1100% increase in unsubscribes and several thousand more bounces that likely were marked as spam. How can we rebuild our reputation and database?

What type of loyalty or relationship do you or can you have with Kleenex® -- aside from the obvious? What about canned soup, beer, cereal, or dog food? You might find it easier to answer if I asked about your relationship with your BMW, Lexus, iPod, or cell phone. There is more involvement in these products and a longer consideration process. Think about what level of involvement you have with each of the products and services you interact with daily, and then think about how you use information to help form and sustain these buying decisions.

For many businesses, regardless of the size, deciding whether to invest in analysis can be a major issue. Campaign testing and analysis comes at a price. Whether that is time, resources, and/or budget, the decision is perplexing to many marketers. Their question: Will the results of my analysis provide enough insight that the potential increase in ROI outweighs the cost of the analysis?