As I love to say, we marketers have a tendency to rely on intuition and experience to get us by. Assuming we don't have enough resources to make empirical data decisions and prove everything through a deep dive into data, how might we convince our organization to look at things differently and make decisions?

We've all been reading a great deal about email rendering these days and the direct impact this issue has on a mailer's brand, delivery, reputation and performance. However, as so often happens with the issue "du jour," good information is often paired with bad, as everyone jumps on the bandwagon to capitalize on the latest hot topic.

The CMO of a major luxury apparel retailer said to me the other day, "I get email five times a week from major brands like Saks, Nordstrom and even Dell. We govern ours to no more than twice per week per subscriber. Am I the idiot?" I responded, "Have you got something interesting to send them five times a week?" Of course his answer was, "Not always." Which, unfortunately, is true of a lot of the daily email programs we receive, isn't it?

Dear Email Diva: This past fall, due to a programming glitch, our vendor emailed up to 40 copies of two of our messages to about 12,000 people on our opt-in list. Needless to say there was tremendous fallout, resulting in a 1100% increase in unsubscribes and several thousand more bounces that likely were marked as spam. How can we rebuild our reputation and database?

What type of loyalty or relationship do you or can you have with Kleenex® -- aside from the obvious? What about canned soup, beer, cereal, or dog food? You might find it easier to answer if I asked about your relationship with your BMW, Lexus, iPod, or cell phone. There is more involvement in these products and a longer consideration process. Think about what level of involvement you have with each of the products and services you interact with daily, and then think about how you use information to help form and sustain these buying decisions.

For many businesses, regardless of the size, deciding whether to invest in analysis can be a major issue. Campaign testing and analysis comes at a price. Whether that is time, resources, and/or budget, the decision is perplexing to many marketers. Their question: Will the results of my analysis provide enough insight that the potential increase in ROI outweighs the cost of the analysis?

It is fascinating to look at the email campaigns from political groups. The first thing you notice is that these folks are worse than me when it comes to spelling. Now I'm not taking sides, but the Republicans in particular are lousy when it comes to spelling, sometimes to pretty hilarious results.

Dear Email Diva: I run AdFemme.com and its weekly e-newsletter. Each week I've noticed that fewer people get the email in their inboxes OR at all. The entire list is made up of people who registered on the site or via the forward link on the newsletters -- so they are high-converting and very interested in receiving the newsletters. What can be done to get the newsletters to everyone on the list and into their inboxes (not junk folders)?

On the surface of it, measuring the value of email marketing is simple: 1,000 emails go out, 995 were delivered, 300 unique people viewed the message in HTML, 100 clicked on one of more links, and 30 purchased something. Thus, based on a causal relationship to direct response, anyone can demonstrate the value of the email channel to a business. However, few people in our space have found a formula that represents the true or implied value of an email address to a business. This is why many will ask, "how should I build an email database?"

Last week's column by Chad White explored the variety of refer-a-friend programs used by retailers. Let's put that and every other topic around email marketing in perspective -- if marketers can't establish clear ROI of our email file, how can we optimize the subscriber experience and obtain necessary resources?