As we sit at the Email Insider Summit in Park City, Utah, we realize that the industry has not failed us again. Another year of record growth in email volume, number of campaigns sent, increases in transactional messaging, more sophistication in customer segmentation and rapid increases in mobile messaging.

Email messages today deliver more value than their 20th-century counterparts through improved design and content, images, branding, and integration with websites and social networks. However, all those gains can come at a price: overly complex messages that sacrifice utility and usability for the latest email fad. Maybe it's time to consider that old design adage "Less is more" and simplify or streamline messages so that they serve both our subscribers' and our own needs without sacrificing the value that drives email's utility and ROI.

Like many of you, I gorged myself on Thanksgiving Dinner yesterday -- only to be left sleepy and desperately not wanting to attack the mound of dishes that lay ahead. As most of the family retired to the couch for some football, I picked up my Android for a quiet moment of Angry Birds before heading to the kitchen to scrub, quickly checked my email first (of course) and was compelled to reflect on what I am most thankful for: my husband, my happy, healthy children, my family and, given the economy, my job. This reflection quickly translated in my …

Last year I wrote a column about some "not-so-obvious" things in the world of email that I'm thankful for. I focused on the people and technologies that keep email safe and secure. To be honest, I'm still thankful for all those things. While the fight against spam, phishing, spoofing and more wins many battles, the war continues and there is much work still to be done. This year, though, I wanted to turn my attention to more aspects of the email ecosystem that I think give us reason to be grateful.

Before the JPG, there was the GIF. Created in 1987, GIFs were introduced to provide a color image format, transparent backgrounds and simple animation by storing multiple images in a single file. GIFs have long been a secret weapon in email design due to the lack of support for rich media files like flash and video in email readers. Now, the old GIF is new again. This year, New York City-based fashion photographer Jamie Beck and visual designer Kevin Burg joined forces to raise animated GIFs to a new level in a style called "cinemagraphs." Cinemagraphs bring people and products …

In early 2011, eConsultancy reported that 72% of marketers believe the return on investment in email marketing outweighs any other direct marketing channel -- and 63% wanted to increase spending in email marketing. Has this happened?

It's that time of year for articles predicting marketing trends for 2012. For this column, however, I'm taking a different approach and outlining several tactics that should be on your 2012 to-do list.

Most email marketers I talk to are much more mindful of inbox clutter than ever, and many are taking steps to cull the number of messages they send out to subscribers -- often starting with the least targeted and lowest ROI. The axe seems to fall on the email newsletter pretty frequently. Often sent to "everybody," the newsletter can qualify as untargeted. But the added work of newsletters is not wasted, not by a long shot. Instead of waning usage of the email newsletter, here is why I think newsletters will (or at least should) enjoy a renaissance:

The replacement theory has never proven true in the digital marketing business. TV was supposed to replace radio. The Internet was supposed to replace TV. And with all due respect to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networks, the death of email has been greatly exaggerated. In fact, last summer Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg told a digital marketing conference that "email is probably going away. It's still here, and still powerful. Like most displacing technologies and applications, social media has changed the game but has not canceled the game anymore than the Internet has canceled TV.

Brands tend to think about direct to consumer email in the simples of ways: the more email I send, the more money I make. The fail rate on an average email, though, is well above 20%, according to Return Path. So in reality, the more emails you send the more one-time customers you bring in the door and push right back out the door when you bombard them with email.Here are our five tips for retailers looking to increase engagement with their users and get out of that SPAM folder.