Of course they aren't. If you're reading this column in email, you might have used the MediaPost Email Insider sender name and subject line words you saw in the inbox to decide to open the message instead of deleting it. But I'm wondering how well text-centric email designs serve today's consumers, whose attention spans have been going through a well-documented decline, and whether it's time to shift more of your email messaging from words to images.

Long gone are the days of concern that social media would be the ultimate demise of email. Not only has the emergence of newer social media platforms given people more ways to communicate, but it has also enhanced the power of email, and vice versa. Unfortunately, in many companies, the email and social teams work separately, thus neglecting the key ways the two channels can benefit each other. Here are five ways you can create a happy marriage between these two channels that were always destined to make the other better.

When you review the Web sites of email service providers, the most promoted email feature is frequently the ability to orchestrate customer journeys specific to the context of the subscriber. But do marketers actually invest in building customer journeys and other types of contextual marketing? In most cases, the answer is a resounding "no."

Today's children have it easy, yet not so easy. And the lessons that we as parents teach can also apply to marketing.

As marketers, we love to blame IT for all of our problems. Here's how to turn them into partners who solve problems instead.

With the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 and the pervasive use of smartphones today, checking email is less of a planned event and now just a fluid part of people's lives. We're in the midst of a seismic shift in how people engage with email, yet marketers are still fixated on the topic of the best day/time to send emails.

Resends became popular a few years ago when marketers realized that sending the same exact email twice would get incremental opens, clicks, and even conversions. The boost to results is small, but since there are few creative or production costs with a resend, the ROI is very attractive. So, how do you get started?

Do you think of the Internet of Things (IoT) as the smart refrigerator and milk being delivered to your door when you run out? Or the smart home where everything is controlled through smart sensors? IoT has been coming for over a decade, and the smart device explosion has made it front and center in consumer markets.

New business models are shifting from purchase and ownership toward sharing or subscriptions. This has and will cause dramatic change in many industries that rely on traditional purchasing scenarios. Here are key areas where email marketing can help convert and retain more subscription customers: