Alchemy Worx, a dedicated marketing firm in the UK, has launched a twice-monthly e-newsletter for email marketing professionals. And Dela Quist, its CEO, says the first newsletter going out each month targets the “right brain” as it covers views and opinions about the business -- and the second is for the “left brain, focusing on hard stats and metrics. Quist says “Email Worx” is not being used as a marketing vehicle for the agency. But the shop is using it as sort of its own focus group -- as a way to test email best practices and look for …

Overstock.com’s email director Allen Dickson says he faces a challenge working in a public company as far as email strategy. Top executives are so focused on producing impressive results on a quarterly basis for Wall Street that they may want to send out a barrage of emails to drive immediate sales. But that can be penny-wise, pound-foolish with numbers looking strong for a month, Dickson says. But after consumers get “fed up” with the mass of emails, they may be turned off and lost. “As a manager of an email programming, you have to think about how is …

Karen Talavera of Synchronicity Marketing, an email marketing firm, is speaking about the opportunity in linking email marketing with traditional offline channels. Even the age-old direct mail. She says marketers behind the well-known Dove “Real Beauty” campaign have been able to bring people into an “online conversation” and learn something about them -- and then send them a direct mail piece. So “email becomes the central linchpin” or “the hub of the wheel,” Talavera says, and serve as an avenue to build a list of interested customers and then target them through other channels. Those also include …

Goodmail Systems CEO Peter Horan is providing an update on the company's recently-launched CertfiedVideo platform, which allows marketers to insert video directly into promotional emails. Instead of quickly driving a consumer to another page when they click on a link, the video is ready-to-watch and housed within the message. Opening an email with a video can break through the clutter where email includes e-newsletters and messages about sales, Horan says. The system, Horan says, has particular value to media companies, with Turner (for NBA TV) and Fox Digital with its BeliefNet site among those using it. Coming next is …

Sometimes what we find through research just validates what we know instinctively. This was certainly the case in both the two-part study of online mothers as well as the "focus group" panel of seven women which were the opening sessions here at the Email Insider Summit. Bottom line: There is no one single profile of "online mom" or "online female." As through the ages, women are as diverse as ever! The "digital mom" is the ultimate multi tasker. She uses trusted sources for information, which - take note marketers! - is usually not the brand website. She values the …

An interesting conversational undercurrent seemed to be doing the rounds Monday at the Email Insider Summit amid the balmy groves of Captiva Island. Amid the various interchanges with various email afficianados, I found myself in a fair few un related conversations about the forthcoming resurgence of embedded video within emails. There is clearly a consensus that with the improvements in the technology, the related lowering of production costs and the increased incidence of household broadband penetration, the market is about ready to re-visit something that has been tried in the past but with less than stellar results. Add …

Lyris, which offers a suite of tools to help maximize ROI for email and other digital campaigns, said Monday at the Summit it is upgrading its Lyris HQ system to allow marketers to gauge the effectiveness of communications on Twitter. Lyris HQ already can track and measure campaigns across a slew of other social media sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. Lyris HQ allows for monitoring of multiple aspects of interactive marketing campaigns, including email but also to stretching to social, mobile and search engine marketing. Lyris said the HQ system now “allows marketers to leverage Twitter …

From the twenty year old student to the sixty-something retired ballet instructor this morning's panel of women showed us a remarkable and varied array of behaviors and attitudes as well some consistent ones. The consistent themes were the reliance on email for just about everything (one 30-something Mom and business woman claimed her use of email was "close to a sickness"); the near ubiquity of a Facebook presence - even among the demographics that are not historically well represented there - with one Mother / Teacher / Entrepreneur describing herself as a "Facebook Junkie" and 30 year old panelist …

The link between email campaigns and mobile is expected to emerge as a major topic at the Summit, perhaps highlighted Tuesday morning during a "Multichannel Marketing" panel. The discussion promises to focus on "a multichannel view of customer experiences with an emphasis on email, social and mobile messaging (tri-messaging)." The panel comes a day after Madison Avenue researcher Magna released a forecast calling for mobile advertising in the U.S. to leap 36% in 2009 (to $229 million). That significant growth level is actually less than what Magna had projected mid-2008, before the recession's effect had hit fully. One …

Somewhat shockingly considering Bear Stearns had collapsed months before, the impact of the economy on email marketing was barely discussed at this event a year ago. On Monday, it was the subject of a dedicated panel discussion. Some tidbits: -Nationwide’s Brian Jaffe said email has replaced 90% of the direct-marketing campaigns â€" which are more expensive â€" for at least some of the company’s initiatives. Still, on the property management portion of the business, there are challenges with using email, so it is not a company-wide rule. -On whether the economy is leading to more email being sent …