In 2007, when people said texting and social media would kill email, I predicted the channel would adapt and "even help facilitate these new emerging technologies." That prediction held up pretty well. But now we're seeing another series of plate-shifting. Will email continue to reign as a key player?

As an industry, we've been talking about dynamic content for a long time - and a next-generation level of dynamic content called open-time personalization is making the seemingly impossible, possible. Open-time personalization, aka agile email or live content, makes it possible to show the most up-to-date or contextual content at the time of open. This is quite different from traditional dynamic content, which is driven by CRM data that may be updated on a 24-hour cycle and contains information potentially outdated at the time of send.

While all of the buzz around Verizon's $4.4 billion purchase of AOL is about adding more content, video, and ad generation to the mobile company's distribution platform, the acquisition will also likely affect email marketers.

With smart shoppers, smartphones, new smart devices and a rising shift in generational behaviors, are you ready for this next generation? Check out "The "Age of Context," a powerful book written in 2013 by the authors of "Naked Conversations." They note five forces driving us from the information age to the age of context: data, mobile, sensors, location-based technology and social. All contribute to a new personalized society where our devices know us better than our friends.

Financial freedom has been a hot topic on the blogosphere for years. A philosophy of frugality drives most: strict budgeting, limited luxuries, extreme couponing, DIY. "Freedom" sure sounds like a whole lot of work. And not much fun. But my favorite bloggers send a message of abundance: Don't waste your time penny-pinching - instead, focus on making more. Let your money make money so you have the time to maximize life enjoyment. Now, that's the kind of freedom I can appreciate -- and email marketing can be approached in the very same way.

This column marks a milestone: the 200th column since my first Email Insider debuted on Sept. 27, 2006, and I became a regular contributor on July 25, 2007. As I looked through my list of columns, I found a few favorites and a couple that took on surprising lives of their own.

Last month, I shared "What NOT To Do With Email Personalization" after an untimely Valentine's Day email hit my inbox, bearing a name that was not my husband's. With that behind us, this month, let's focus on a TO-do: effective email pre-headers to enhance your subject line.

According to data published by Caslon & Co. based on research by the DMA and PODi, personalized marketing content generates response rate 3x or more than static content for various marketing objectives, including ordering. But what if you have thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of customers? If they could send the right product offer to every single one of their customers in every email campaign, the results would be fantastic. But conventional wisdom puts this beyond all but the largest companies. There is so much attention to this area now that things are changing. What you assumed true …

Email has been around for some time. It's a mature digital channel that appears to have a clear identity, yet I'm ready to challenge what we believe it to be. Email as defined by the Webster Dictionary is "a system for sending messages from one computer to another computer." Essentially, the definition declares email as a direct communication medium between computers. Why, then, do we only consider email as the messages we receive in an inbox? Shouldn't all digital direct messaging channels be considered an email or a subtype of email?

The good news: Many marketers test their subject lines. According to the Direct Marketing Association (U.K.), 80% of marketers use some form of subject line testing. The bad news: Many of the most commonly used subject-line tactics actually decrease results. In some cases, marketers are testing suboptimal approaches.