By all accounts, the U.S. economy and others around the world are either in recession now or heading for one before 2008 ends. How long it will last and how rough it will get is anybody's guess, but I'm not waiting for the official proclamation, and neither should you. Here are survival strategies to follow during an economic downturn.

One of the advantages of going before heavy hitters like David Baker and Loren McDonald in the Email Insider lineup is that I get first crack at hot topics. Like this week's for instance: email and the recession.My theory is pretty straightforward. While a recession is certainly not good for anybody, it may have a beneficial effect on email marketing. Or at the very least, email should be less affected by a recession than other marketing channels.

Dear Email Diva: Even if a company is offering something in return for updating your profile that's for yourself, you can usually ignore it without much guilt, but jeez, here's a company making it easy for me to be greener -- heck, look at the baby tree, helpless until I plant him -- just for updating my profile.

One evening, at the start of a four-hour train ride at the end of a long day, I found myself wishing I could just close my eyes and be transported home immediately. This got me thinking about how we live in a society where people constantly seek instant gratification versus enjoying the journey. Even email marketing plays into the instant gratification idealization. We deploy an email and within hours we can see how well it is performing -- so it's not a leap to understand why many marketers quest for the quick-fix solution. Yet the reality is that email marketing …

This week I inducted the 2007 class into my Oopsy Hall of Fame, which is a collection of email marketing mistakes made by the retailers I track via RetailEmail.Blogspot. The point of the list isn't to shame anyone; mistakes in this business are pretty much unavoidable, given the high volumes and short deadlines that many work under. Rather it's to point out where trouble spots lie and to inspire processes to avoid them.

Search for mobile marketing on the Web, and you'll be presented with a plethora of resources and articles on SMS and MMS. Search for mobile email marketing, and you'll be hard-pressed to find much at all. Yet whether we pay attention to it or not, mobile email is happening. Not only have business users been reading their emails on mobile devices, but an increasing number of consumers are as well.

Dear Email Diva: Is a business that hosts its own mail server required to deliver only certain or all emails to the recipient specified in the email header? Is the business allowed to block or withhold emails from delivery, based on content?

When was the last time you gave to a charitable organization? Now put on your email marketing hat and think about how poorly these organizations use email to build this connection with the individual. Gone are the days of getting your address stickers in the mail with cute little dog icons and hoping that you will give a $25 donation to the poor animals that are being abused.

I've been thinking about the concept of "cheating" in the email marketing industry for a while now, and the release of the Mitchell Report makes me wonder: What would an outside investigator find if he came in and scrutinized our industry? Who would be the Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens of email marketing?

With the writers strike sucking the life out of the Golden Globe awards, I thought it might be a good idea to give you award-starved readers something to tide you over. I currently track the email campaigns of over 35,000 brands, publishers, and affiliate sites. Here are some of the best email marketers of 2007....