No one wrings their hands over email marketing's stellar ROI, but I'm surprised by how often a big deal is made out of "low" open, click and conversion rates. Everything is about perspective. And that's absolutely the case when looking at open rates, which can be highly misleading, especially when compared over long periods of time or between different companies.

A little over a year ago, a who's who of leading Internet players announced the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) working group, an industry-based approach to combating spam, phishing and other forms of messaging abuse. And on Feb. 6, its one-year anniversary, DMARC.org announced a rather amazing accomplishment: The DMARC standard now protects almost two-thirds of the world's 3.3 billion consumer mailboxes worldwide, and was responsible for blocking 325 million unauthenticated messages in November and December 2012 alone.

During a recent discussion at an email marketing conference on next-generation best practices for list-building, the conversation turned to a tactic that interrupts a page visit with a floating data-capture form, called variously a pop-over, slide-over, interstitial, modal, pop-under or div layer. These are not the reviled pop-ups that launch new browser windows or redirect the user. Instead, they are part of the page itself and are becoming a very popular acquisition tactic, especially for retailers and publishers. But they can do so much more, too. Pop-overs and their many variants can be part of a whole new strategy to …

In this day and age, many marketers exist in a paradoxical state: they're data-rich but insights-poor. Marketers know they have to build more complete customer profiles and to connect the dots (in other words, apply insights) at the consumer level across multiple marketing channels. How do they plan on getting there?

Even a year ago, only days after the DMARC standard was officially unveiled, its impact on email marketers and other senders was already clear. Senders who'd been authenticating mail from their domains suddenly had better visibility into their subscribers' experience and a powerful and easy way to protect their customers and brands from phishing and other email abuse. It worked from day one.

My husband is a big movie lover, one of those guys who can whip out a quote or scenario from some of the most obscure movies at just the right time. The other day we got on the subject of the many Austin Powers movies and the classic quotes and moments that came from that series of films: Femmbots, Mr. Bigglesworth -- and yes, Dr. Evil. As an archenemy for Austin Powers, Dr. Evil is a pretty funny dude (though you may choose to disagree). But what if he were an email marketing consultant? How funny would that be? Welcome …

Establishing yourself as the go-to-brand in your industry is about more than creating solid marketing programs; it's also about creating value by sharing expertise through editorial content. By adding educational messaging to your promotional messaging, you can increase the number of subscribers who engage with your campaign. But It's not always easy to know what will feel the most relevant to a particular audience at a particular time, and it can be hard to stick our heads above our day-to-day frenzy to get a clear view of what matters outside of our current projects. To help minimize the brain-racking and …

Email inspiration is everywhere, even in the Super Bowl. As a lifelong San Francisco 49ers fan, I was excited to see the team go for its sixth NFL championship. But I also was impressed by Coach Jim Harbaugh's bold personnel move in the middle of the regular season, which illustrated one of my perennial pieces of advice for email marketers: "If it ain't broke, then break it."

Now I'm no economist, but my wife -- who hates spending money and doesn't even play Xbox - just bought us a 55" LCD TV. If that isn't a harbinger of improved economic conditions, I don't know what is. It isn't just consumer spending that has changed, however. Several studies recently have pointed out how marketers are planning to increase budgets in 2013, with lifts in digital leading the way. So now that marketers have a little financial breathing room of their own, I believe they will approach email differently than they have over the past few lean years. Here …

The term "audience management" is beginning to bleed into email and CRM discussions as a means of better articulating the way consumers are affected by a combination of direct marketing, social marketing and media-oriented activities.