I'm as guilty as every other strategist or consultant in our space who makes "best practices" presentations to clients, spouting every statistic in the book to describe the consumer/marketer landscape and what works. But when push comes to shove, and I have to show five "best practices" examples of relevancy in e-mail programs, triggered e-mail programs, surveys, opt-in registration pages, or media creative... I grit my teeth and smile and present work from the industry to show what others are doing. Does that make it "best practices," though? I've seen three presentations from e-mail vendors in the last month about …

Last week we took a graphical look at how 3 key insights of email rendering have become all of the rage. However, the column assumed that readers understood how and why image rendering has become such a big issue and what options there are for help and advice on image blocking and testing and what we can expect in the future.

An interesting article fell on my desk this morning: a piece in the current Time magazine called "A Spammer's Revenge, with a subhead that reads, "His right to free speech trumps your right to privacy." The article describes the background of a $3.8 million lawsuit that a company called Omega World Travel brought against Mark Mumma, an "Internet services provider and antispam crusader."

Dear E-Mail Diva: My nonprofit has used e-mail blasts to alert our field about upcoming events and issues. Our e-mail service vendor now tells us most of our messages are getting caught in spam filters. Are e-blasts no longer an effective vehicles?

Creative e-mail marketing is not just about pretty pictures or clever copy. It's about creating interesting and engaging ideas and reasons for a consumer to engage with you, then applying what you know to facilitate the online exchange.

Email rendering is the latest battlefront in the deliverability wars, and it doesn't look like this issue is going away in 2007. For example, how do you know if your messages look and function properly in the many email readers?

I guess we are making our New Year's resolutions. I'm guessing that by now, most of us have already broken most of them. So I have some resolutions for this column and some reality checks for loyal readers.

To start off the new year: stats on smartphone usage here and abroad.