Toby Fallsgraff, who oversaw the 2012 Obama campaign's email efforts, said with messaging "novelty can be highly effective, it can also be highly fleeting," so testing is critical.

Toby Fallsgraff, who oversaw the Obama campaign's email efforts, said the campaign raised more than $500 million online via 4.5 million donors, averaging $53 a donation.

Did the Obama campaign send too much email? Toby Fallsgraff, who ran the email efforts for the campaign, said testing indicated people were not put off.

What's been the most-talked-about email campaign of 2012? Arguably, the one run by President Obama's campaign. In his keynote address Tuesday at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit, the campaign's email director Toby Fallsgraff says the team knew it would be a different campaign than 2008 when President Obama had a record to run on and also "a day job."

Evan Shumeyko, the Global Director of CRM for OgilvyOne, said Monday that social media is growing, but "email is still a prevalent and dominant platform." One advantage is it offers is an ability to capture customer data that outpaces the social space.

Email marketers constantly debate how often to send email to potential or current customers. Business interests are different across categories, but it's clear that discussion is not going away, even in a world of in-box bombardment.

The goal of relevance is clear: Right message, right person, right time. Yet, relevance is like art. It's in the eye of the beholder. What is relevance, anyway?

Cisco is moving aggressively to experiment with social media sites beyond Facebook and Twitter. Take next month's Consumer Electronics Show, it plans to launch a content on Pinterest asking people to share their visual experiences, said Paula Wang, a senior manager in marketing platforms.

Panelists -- all industry mavens -- offered 25 great email marketing ideas, some of which I thought were pretty powerful. I'm only including here those I thought had real value. (Power of the pen!)

The moderator, the one running the show, was the only one to blow it. A panel on social media where participants were challenged not to mention Facebook or Twitter had just Silverpop's Loren McDonald's offering up the "F" word. When needing to mention Facebook or Twitter, panelists hewed to the synonym that was to be used: First Bank of Toronto.