Traditionally most companies look to email marketing as the "workhorse" channel to drive revenue from existing customers. The need to maximize revenue from email has moved most email marketers away from the old school batch-and-blast approaches to a much wider variety of tactics. This makes email marketing a much more complex place to work. But new email data is creating opportunities to become more efficient.

This time of year brings about the dreaded RFP process. Brands ask the logical question: "How would you improve our email marketing program?" Back in the day, I built RFPs, ran them for myself, helped administer them for clients, responded to more than I preferred -- and most of them probably should have stayed at home.