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For email marketers, dealing with the small business owner can be an ongoing challenge. There are typically three main obstacles to introducing email marketing to a small businesses.

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With marketing channels proliferating and messaging devices diversifying, it's not hard to imagine a future where permissions are granted not only by marketing channel (email, postal mail, phone, RSS), but also by content, device, time, and place. All the more reason to genuinely understand "permission," which in the world of email marketing seems relegated to subjective definitions.

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In this second of our three-part series on the six Cs of permission email marketing, we continue to define the permission fundamentals by examining the third and fourth dimensions of permission: Clarity and Confidence.

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If you now understand (or can at least appreciate!) the first four Cs of Permission Email Marketing: Conscious Consent, Choice, Clarity and Confidence, you're ready for our final two: Control and Confirmation.

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You can uncover a slew of companies that tout the virtues of this email service and that email service and that other service over there in the corner. How does a corporate marketer charged with the sole purpose of finding the right company to provide software and service to get an email marketing campaigns off the ground make the right choice?

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Email is not dying in the midst of the social-media revolution. In fact, the question we should be asking is: How can email marketers best leverage the new social-marketing applications?

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Good email design is a critical part of ensuring a high response rate. A major frustration within the industry is the lack of standards to guide designers when creating HTML email. Though there isn't one email-marketing design bible, there are fundamental design rules that should be applied. This article reviews some of the high-level design principles as well as more in-depth rules affecting some of the most common issues email marketers face.

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If you are an email marketer who is doing traditional "batch and blast" email marketing, now's a good time to start segmenting and sending triggered emails. Doing so allows you to send more relevant emails and achieves better response from your subscribers.

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In the two weeks leading up to the November 4 election, email messages came fast and furious from the presidential campaigns of both John McCain and Barack Obama. In the last week, both supporters received at least two emails a day from both campaigns. In evaluating those email messages, I saw commonly held best-practices that should be emulated, practices that should be avoided by marketers, and a few new concepts that may inspire email marketers to take their programs to the next level. Despite the outcome of the election, lessons can be learned from both presidential candidates. Also, some practices simply do not cross over from the relationships that political candidates form with their constituents to the relationships that marketers develop with their customers.

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Unfortunately, for most marketers, email marketing remains an educated guess predicated on seasonal and industry trends. What most marketers don't realize is that they have an opportunity to send out smart, high-performance campaigns based on true consumer desires. Here's how.

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The news about investment in marketing is not good as many firms cut their marketing budgets left and right. Instead of taking an ax to your marketing budget, consider first how your budget is allocated and move some resources to marketing activities that yield a higher ROI.

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Getting your permission-based email marketing emails into the inbox and ensuring that your email design is just right are closely related. Here is some useful information on the nexus between the two as well as on doing both well.

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Email is a medium for economically and effectively marketing your small business. But most everything out there that provides guidelines, best-practices, and advice on the application of the channel to your marketing efforts are largely geared toward bigger businesses. Until now, that is, because here are 10 tips you can leverage and implement easily and quickly—while still having a positive influence on your bottom line—without having to worry yourself with multivariate testing, dynamic content development, and data integration.

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Sears performed a courageous email-marketing act in mid-December. Like every retailer, Sears was surely eager for additional sales and revenue as the worst holiday season in memory reached a crescendo and the sale window started to close. Despite that pressure, the Sears team had the discipline to hit the pause button on the hard sell in attempting to make a connection with subscribers. Instead, it sent a co-marketing email with Heroes at Home, promoting a national gift registry for returning US soldiers.

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Not all customers are alike, and what appeals to one may not interest another. Therefore, it is important that you connect the message you are sending to your customers' differing interests. Email messages that are segmented, targeted, and relevant to the recipient are much more likely to be opened and acted upon.

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Here are five essential areas of any email marketing program that are worth poking around in. Turn over some rocks, and don't hesitate to dump anything you discover underneath that shouldn't be there. In the spirit of spring, let's do some email cleanup.

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A great-looking email template is important for establishing credibility and brand recognition with readers; but, as the old saying goes, never judge a book by its cover. The same mentality should always be applied to email campaigns. A nice-looking template means nothing if subscribers aren't engaged and interested in what you have to say. The content of your email or newsletter is vital to the success of your campaign. Whether creating awareness, generating sales, or building customer loyalty, it's important to remember what keeps customers coming back for more.

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Sometimes we get so caught up in the procedural logistics of email marketing that we forget we're communicating with real people. We think in terms of lists, databases, target audiences, and segments. With email, as with conventional channels, it's important to remember that there are real people on the other end of our messages. When we press the send button, we're not just delivering messages to in-boxes, we're communicating with individuals. Here are three tips to help you personalize and "conversationalize" your email and, in so doing, remind yourself (or retrain your brain, if necessary) that there's a living, breathing person receiving those digital marketing messages you send.

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Email is one of the easiest, most affordable, and most effective marketing tools out there. Nonetheless, launching an email-marketing program can seem a daunting challenge, especially for time-strapped entrepreneurs and small-business owners.

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It's high time for email marketers to assess campaign performance in terms of the business and marketing goals, objectives, and contribution expectations that matter. So how do you figure out what matters? Hint: There is no one-size-fits-all answer.