Starting day three of the MediaPost Email Insider Summit, Naomi Mulgrave, the global director of product development at American Express, offered a call for change -- and call to not stop until necessary change is implemented. "When you reject change, you stifle innovation," she said. She offered up three tips on how to drive innovation: -Articulate the downside of inertia. -Share & exchange ideas with stakeholders. -Influence the organization with external thinking.

One of Hulu's owners, media investment company Providence Equity Partners, is reportedly close to selling its 10% stake to the other three big owners. The report from Bloomberg says Providence, which invested $100 million in 2007 when the digital video platform was launch, is looking to get double its investment -- $200 million. The other major media owners of Hulu are Walt Disney, Comcast, and News Corp. For many analysts that means Hulu.com is worth some $2 billion currently. Reports suggest Disney, News Corp. and NBC Universal each hold Hulu stakes of about 27%, while Providence and Hulu employees own …

Speaking at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit, the engaging Erik Teng, marketing manager in email at WebMD, said there continues to be a sort of beauty vs. the beast debate in email marketing. A creative team may design appealing messages, but they lack praticality in areas such as how they appear on mobile platforms. There needs to be more coordination between designers and email marketers, he suggested. "They can design the most beautiful email, but it may not work at the end of the day," he said.

A heated debate is ensuing at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit on the morality of the e-append list growth strategy, highlighted by sharp condemnation from Jordan Cohen, vp-business development at Pontiflex. "It's not really OK to do," he said bluntly.

Jose Cebrian, an Acxiom executive, said email campaigns drive search. Bumps in search traffic can be tracked to large email campaigns.

On a panel at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit, Bob Frady, an executive who oversees email marketing at Expedia, wondered what the role of email is as the landscape evolves. "What is email? Is it an efficiency channel or a brand play?," he said. Separately, Frady said there is a challenge in finding sturdy analytics data with email and "you have to make sure that your traffic is being appropriately handled" by measurement companies.

Trendline Interactive CEO Morgan Stewart said in surveys, consumers say the company that best communicates with them through email is Amazon (20% say so, unprompted) and Amazon does not bombard people with messages, but is strategic with its programs.

Morgan Stewart, CEO of Trendline Interactive and programming chair at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit, began day two of the event with some data from the Pew Internet research origanization. Data included came from a nationally representative telephone survey of U.S. adults and teens (on landlines and cell phones). Somewhat jarring stat: With teenagers, only 6% of use email daily, while 39% say they never use email.

WPP the London-based ad holding company reported a 5.5% hike in revenues for the first quarter to $3.76 billion. The company said profits increased in the quarter versus the same year ago period but did not provide a figure or percentage gain. It said operating profit margins was also "ahead of last year and in line with the Group's targeted margin improvement" goal of half a percentage point. Organic revenue growth, which excludes acquisitions and currency fluctuations, reached 4%, in the middle of the pack compared competitors. Omnicom Group, for example, said its first-quarter organic growth rose 5.1%, Publicis Groupe …

Not that this has any relevance to the MediaPost Email Insider Summit, but you do pick up things in conversation. Reading a guidebook to Philly cheesesteaks, one often hears about Pat's and Geno's. But John Lewis, a director at Zeta Interactive, a Philly guru and devoted Villanova fan, offered up some recommendations: