Lunch is a social activity - don't we all have those daily conversations about where to go, what to get and what we had? What a great opportunity for lunch marketers to tap a vein of existing word of mouth to build brand loyalty and drive new trial.

The decisoin about hosted vs. in-house email broadcast solutions is not a technology decision, it's a business decision. So noted Ryan Deutsch, VP, Strategic Services at StrongMail (an in-house solution) in a panel debating the pros and cons of hosting in house or out of house. The companies that in source email have challenges to manage the infrastructure, he says, but MTA vendors like StrongMail are offering managed services to help marketers control and optimize the use of the technology. Dave Hendricks, VP Market Strategy at Datran Media (an ASP solution) agrees, noting that the technology can always be more …

True or false: Hosted solutions will never give you the control you need to integrate customer dta, touchpoints and multi-channel campaign management. Answer: False, according to this morning's three technology panelists.

Talk about an extensive menu: Quiznos seems to have tried just about every online loyalty-building channel there is within the past couple of years. Listening to Correy Honza, director of internet marketing, run through these efforts, you couldn't help but salute the company's innovation quotient.

The immediacy of email marketing may make it tempting for companies to look at initial costs and conversion rates versus other channels and pretty much stop there. But the dangers of this were driven home by two panelists in a session on determining the right metrics for your business, moderated by Loren McDonald of Lyris, Inc.

Got customers outside the US? Hewlett Packard runs a program that crosses literally 16 time zones covering customers in 170 countries from North America to Europe/Africa to the Asian Pacific Rim. At today's Summit, Daryl Nielsen and Jared Hansen shared an incredible number of learnings and tips for anyone expanding to a global program.

It was refreshing and inspiring to hear Arend Hendersen, Director of Analytics for third party offer service Q Interactive speak about how their optimization of the subscriber experienced resulted in higher ROI for both Q and advertisers.

There is nothing like a pissed off customer to help solidify a new strategy. David Maher, VP Fidelity Communications & Advertising, opened the Email Insider Summit today with a story about an affluent customer who was so annoyed at being sent stacks of snail mail (transaction reminders for his account) that he actually took his own picture (looking pretty glum and annoyed) next to a week's worth of packages from Fidelity and sent it in to the company.

No doubt about it: Highly regulated financial services companies have traditionally generated more than their share of paper. These days, Financial services companies  David Maher, VP, Fidelity Communications & Advertising

Judging from attendee and speaker responses to a quick poll conducted by "Setting the Stage for Innovation" panel moderator Matt Blumberg, CEO of Return Path, 2008 looks promising for email marketing. Attendees' show of hands clearly confirmed that the great majority will have larger budgets and larger staffs in the coming year. Panelists Jack Hogan of LifeScript, David Daniels of JupiterResearch and Hal Brierley of eMiles also reported increased budgets and staffs for the coming year. (Cisco's budget will be flat, but its team will be bigger, according to Email Program Manager Brian Ellefritz.)