The Acme Company has a small email list that the firm wants to grow as quickly as possible. Its strategists decide to bribe people to give up their email addresses by offering a sweepstakes or a free T-shirt. It works, kind of. The entries pour in, thanks to a pre-checked opt-in box, and fueled by the great prize Acme is giving away. There's only one problem. The people who are now opted-in for the email program have no interest whatsoever in regular contact from Acme Company.

I have two young daughters at home who love to play with blocks. My four-year-old knows that if she builds a strong foundation, she can add blocks to her tower and make it taller and taller. My one-year-old has not yet learned this lesson, and her towers continually fall down. The same is true for email marketing. Without a good foundation and a strong plan, your program will fall apart no matter how hard you try. One of the key components to a strong foundation is building a sound contact plan.

Though animation fell out of favor years ago, it's time for email marketers to give the technique another look. That's the conclusion I came to after nearly a year of collecting and analyzing emails with animation from the largest online retailers. Based in part on retailers' increasing use of animation on their Web sites, I predict a doubling of its adoption rate in email marketing over the next 12 months.

Last week's Inbox Conference in San Jose, Calif. appeared to disappoint both exhibitors and attendees. Jupitermedia execs, who recently acquired the conference, have their work ahead of them to resurrect what was once the first serious show to take on the email channel.

In my last article. a reader asked what may have caused his emails to render with no text or graphics whatsoever. Kal Hadi of WhittmanHart suggested a solution that included the use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and led to some controversy.

Email marketing has progressed in numerous ways over the past five years -- from advancements in technology to the ways marketers utilize the medium within their overall marketing plan. Here are the most relevant changes, along with my predictions for the future.

While every marketer strives to create a positive customer experience, not every business is built on a model of delivering nirvana. For example, when was the last time you heard of a positive experience with an auto insurance claim?