There is something going on in the e-mail space--something dramatic. One sign is the recent purchase of Bigfoot Interactive by Alliance Data Systems for $120 million, on $30 million in sales.

I've always thought of a customer list as a leaky bucket. While you are filling the bucket with fresh new customers from the faucet, old customers are dripping out the bottom.

So you've tried just about every attention-getting gimmick, tactic and approach to raise response through e-mail, and now you are at your wit's end. As I've said many times before, there are only so many variables in e-mail that you can test, including open rate, click-through rate, subscription rate, conversion rate, transaction rate and viral rates.