On the issue of email frequency and cadence, ExactTarget's Todd Wilson says tread carefully, though decisions vary by category.

A StrongMail "Marketing Trends" global survey of 938 business executives on apportioning marketing investment in 2012 found compelling implications for email marketing:

At the MediaPost Email Insider Summit, StrongMail's Kara Trivunovic said that it is critical for marketers to jump in and respond to commentary on a Facebook or Twitter feed. "In the social space, silence is deafening," she said.

Jeanette Gibson, a Cisco social media executive, said with the company's marketing "content is king" and over the next three years she says: "It's all about mobile and video."

At Cisco, social media executive Jeanette Gibson says her company has come up with a social media ROI metric -- tabbed "social media engagement "-- that uses "total response" divided by reach, and the CMO has embraced it.

At the MediaPost Email Insider Summit, Engauge's Raghu Kakarala said four or five years ago, he noticed social media would be increasingly important -- actually a "threat to what we're doing" -- so the challenge has been integration.

With day three of the MediaPost Email Insider Summit underway, the Direct Marketing Association's Email Experience Council and Epsilon released a third-quarter study showing a 7.1% increase in open rates over 2011's second quarter and 7.8% bump over the third quarter in 2010.

On a "21st Century Marketing Intelligence" panel, it was interesting that one panelist has the cash to hire more, while two others need to find more money for innovation.

Keeping email relevant is more difficult than ever with finicky consumers, who are bombarded with messages -- and poor judgment can bring a widely seen backlash.

On the question of how to ensure a company keeps innovating, LiveIntent's Dave Hendricks was rather blunt. "Stop being a coward and go try stuff, everyone here is too scared to try things," he said.