How do you explain to your mother what you do for a living? It starts with telling her people will spend $15.73 billion showering their mothers with gifts this year, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation. The study notes that people are more thoughtful about the way they give gifts -- but are marketers as creative in their tactics and messages surrounding this very popular consumer event?

I've been reading Chris Baggott's newly released book Email Marketing By the Numbers: How to Use the World's Greatest Marketing Tool to Take Any Organization to the Next Level, and one of the things that got me thinking was the advice "Be human." Chris says, "People don't fall in love with institutions... Your chance of landing in a great relationship increases exponentially when you show a human side."

In preparation for the Email Insider Summit happening this week, we sent out a survey to the attendees asking about various issues facing them. While I will be presenting the details at the Summit itself, I thought I would provide some of the more interesting results here.

A charitable organization wants to understand how to work with social networks to increase its donor base. My research has led me to wonder what impact these networks will have on reaching Gen Y/Net Gen, and how networks will affect the future of email. The first step, though, is to get that we don't get it.

Recently I heard that email as an industry is worth $10 billion. Not bad after only 10 years or so, if you buy into that number. As our industry approaches maturity, I believe we are on the verge of a new phase of evolution. Now is the time to get ready for it.

Students of language know that as new terms become accepted by the mainstream they evolve into shorter words, single words and shed their capitalization and hyphenation. Words like "on-line" and "Web log" have over time become "online" and "blog" as people became more comfortable with them. "Electronic mail" has followed a similar acceptance arc, becoming "E-mail" and then "e-mail." It's now time for the word to take its final step and become simply "email," severing its antiquated 19th-century association with mail delivered by people in blue uniforms.

It is hard to believe that we are only one week away from the next Email Insider Summit. For those companies and individuals who cannot be at the summit, you can still have a presence if you've written a white paper, case study, or best practices paper. The Email Experience Council will be hosting a White Paper Room at the summit and is accepting white papers on topics that extend the discussion on email marketing.

I have just experienced, for the fifth time, a silent-but-deadly problem with email delivery systems. Have you found there are companies from whom you cannot get email? No matter how many times you go to their site and sign up, the email never gets to your inbox or even your junk mail filter....