Amazon's program is incredibly customer centric. It was rather surprising to hear that sometimes they send information that is not specifically of interest to the customer.

Amazon's program is incredibly customer centric. It was rather surprising to hear that sometimes they send information that is not specifically of interest to the customer.

There's more information about Web users than ever available these days, but how much of it is actually useful to marketers?

Chris Epper, brand manager, at Pei Wei Asian Diner (P.F. Chang's) says that email signup should be really easy for a consumer. His company has been working on making the signup process as simple as possible. "You are signing this person up with the intent of having a long relationship," he said.

Amazon's approach to email is centered on data and understanding the customer. This involves a number of steps. The first is to look at pace and frequency. If a customer has purchased every book in a particular series, Amazon will send that customer an email to alert them that the latest title in the series is out. But if that customer doesn't open or respond to any of these messages, Amazon will slow down the frequency.

Katherine Youngblood, senior manager of email marketing at InterContinental Hotels Group said that sometimes she feels like rich Uncle Bob. "Everyone wants to go to them when they need money but nobody wants to hang out with them," she said. To address this problem, she said that she is always reminding senior marketing people to think about email as they are planning their marketing campaigns and to get them involved with email from the beginning.

TBC Corp. (which took Midas private last year for $173 million in cash) needs to improve its email marketing efforts. For too long, the tire giant hasn't been properly leveraging consumer data, John Kavaliauskas Senior Manager of CRM, Loyalty & Data Driven Marketing at TBC told attendees of MediaPost's Email Insider Summit on Thursday. Trying to turn the corner, the company is currently developing a marketing database that will boast far more consumer data, according to Kavaliauskas. One issue is that TBC doesn't really "know" a customer well until they've visited its Web site or a physical retail location two …

On a data mining panel at the Email Insider Summit, Universal Music's Angela Sanchez says her company is beginning to explore best practices in sending targeted emails based on social media behavior.

CareerBuilder.com generated almost immediate ROI from responsive design and optimized mobile experiences.

CareerBuilder's Scott Burdsall is giving a presentation at the Email Insider Summit on the increasingly attention-grabbing subject of responsive design and mobile.