I was speaking with a reporter recently and was asked the obligatory, "Why is email dying?" question. I don't think he really thought that was the case, but that he just wanted to see how I would respond. I gave him a five-minute rant on why email is alive and well -- and then told him the two marketing channels that are on my deathwatch list:

Well it's official. lLast week began the 2011 retail holiday season. An optimist would say the retail holiday season's proverbial glass is half full, with an expected 2.8% growth over 2010. A pessimist would say the glass is half empty, suggesting consumer confidence is pretty low and access to credit diminishing consumer optimism. An optimist looks at the good, the pessimist looks at the bad -- and a marketer might say, rather, "Your glass needs resizing."

Since 2002 I have written somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 articles and blog posts for various publications. This one is my 109th Email Insider column. Some columns resonate long after publication I've listed them here, along with my personal awards that explain why they're still on my mind.

Sales-focused B2B cultures tend to align themselves along two extremes: either they dismiss marketing entirely and refuse to consider the value marketing can bring to their efforts, or they give marketing too much free rein and lose the connection between marketing and sales efforts. Either way, direct-response marketers are in a tough spot. Without a direct connection between marketing efforts and revenue, we must rely on optimization metrics to show that the incremental results from a marketing/sales mixed effort generate greater ROI than without.Measurement is difficult to do in any organization. When marketing and sales are disconnected, or when marketing …