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.