Dear Email Diva: We're trying to evaluate various email service providers. I've found Top Ten Reviews. Can you suggest any others?

Are you contemplating taking on behavioral targeting and optimizing customer touch points through triggered email messaging? Take a step back before tackling this animal. While building messaging programs and triggering these from disparate business events is pretty baseline for ecommerce sites, the sheer magnitude of building these programs can be cumbersome.

Recognizing the power of email to drive sales and accepting Cyber Monday as an established selling occasion, 52% more retailers sent promotional email on Cyber Monday this year than last year.

It never ceases to amaze me what a poor job some larger companies do when it comes to their email marketing programs. I'm not talking about small companies that -- perhaps -- don't have the time and resources to do it right. I'm talking really big companies that destroy their email brand equity every time they hit "send."

Smart people had many additional suggestions in response to my last column, about applications that make email marketers' lives easier. Let the helpful ideas begin!

There was a considerable build-up to Black Friday and the weekend's shopping, with special in-store promotions sent through email. I thought I'd call out some of the better promotions.

Let's talk about the whole idea of written communication. That is, after all, what email is. Television is visual as are, for the most part, print ads and banner ads. Radio is auditory. Mobile marketing is more of a haiku, as far as I can see. Email marketing, especially in the age of blocked images, is primarily the copywriter's realm. It is about stringing words together in a way that makes an impact.

Last week I used SnagIt for the thousandth time and was introduced to Basecamp. It got me thinking about all the cool tools eMarketers love and love to evangelize. So, in this season of being thankful and making gift lists, I asked my colleagues to share the fabulous apps that make their lives easier. Coincidentally, most of these tools are free or low-cost.

Your daily schedule probably rarely allows you to read more than a headline or two. If you are some of the lucky email marketers, you may have time to read a few newsletters, industry briefs and possibly belong to a few lists that talk about email marketing a lot and maybe attend a webinar. So, this column will focus on what everyone's talking about -- not solutions, but issues that are buzzing in the email space.

Let's have a moment of silence for the forgotten pages of email marketing, those lonely and neglected pages that haven't been updated in two years or more or --gasp! -- haven't been altered from the default template set by the vendor.