It's time to start thinking about the health of your email list, while your budgets are still fresh and your 2017 strategy is still getting off the ground. Email was the third-highest traffic driver to retail web sites on Black Friday, according to Adobe Digital Insights. Holiday season is long gone, of course. So how can your emails drive traffic now and for the rest of the year? Here are the key questions to ask yourself, to make sure you're on track for email marketing greatness:

A recent MediaPost article "Entitled Consumers Need Your Empathy," argues that empathy is critical in marketing to meet the needs of consumers who are nearly impossible to please: "Marketers should focus on the consumers whose expectations they can meet, bringing their empathetic understanding of those individuals to bear." Unfortunately, email marketers tend to be forced into following rigorous calendars based solely on revenue projections, and send minimal communications based on what a consumer actually wants or needs from a brand. It's time to pivot. Here are a few ways you can demonstrate empathy for your entitled customers and stop sending …

Technologies like cognitive marketing tools will help marketers deliver more relevant content and offers at the right time than humans alone ever could.

Nearly any company engaging in commerce online sends transactional emails, yet too many aren't maximizing their opportunity to turn these emails into revenue-generating sends. Here are some ideas I challenge you to consider in 2017:

We should all remember, there is a fine line between marketing brilliance - and having to walk into your boss's office and explain a poor customer digital experience that went viral. Sometimes the problem could be a personalization attempt that went awry.

Email marketers spend a lot of time on email analytics. Various studies put the amount of time spent on analyzing the results of their email marketing activities between 15% and 25%. However, the kinds of reporting provided by email platforms don't make it easy to answer the key questions that email marketers are being asked.