In all the talk of social media and its influence on email marketing, it occurred to me that email marketers consistently commit an antisocial sin. Worse still, it is a sin often taught as a "best practice" in order to decrease the hassle of managing a large number of responses to marketing email messages. I am writing of the dreaded "no-reply@" email address.

Imagine you're walking through a store and see signs for a demonstration of a product you're interested in. You follow the signs to the back of the store and through a door that leads into the back alley, where you see the product demonstration going on. It's not the best brand impression, so chances are you're not going to stick around.It's the same thing when you reach a dead-end landing page without any branding, navigation or secondary content. I call this "back alley syndrome," and I've seen two glaring cases of it from major retailers in recent months.

A study by Focalyst shows that seniors (62+) using the Internet today have higher purchase intents than younger segments do, in major categories such as travel, CPG, entertainment and pharmaceuticals. What's more, seniors who do use the Internet have almost double the income and are twice as likely to have gone to college and still be working and married, than those who are not connected. And there are other considerations about this huge demographic that should make them interesting to email marketers....

If you're already thinking about how to take your email-marketing program to the next level in the coming year, you should start by switching out your batch-and-blast program for one that uses lifecycle marketing to send highly targeted and relevant messages. Although it might be a challenge to persuade your upper management to invest time and money to upgrade your email program, this story of a company that boosted its conversion rate 40% using segmentation and targeted messaging might help loosen up the budget.

I'm so bored with the "email is dead" meme that I'm not even going to reference the article recently seen in a national newspaper that trotted out this old story yet again. I think it's exciting to consider the ways in which email is still the killer app. Obviously when you work for a company that focuses on email you have a vested interest in the idea that email is not dead. But I think both research and common sense back me up. Here are four reasons to stay bullish on email.

About a month ago, a friend of mine gave me a sneak peek at her beauty and fashion site's revamped newsletter, set to launch some time this month. Everything about the design felt fresh, clean, and engaging. It was organized to perfection, the visuals were spot-on, the copy was fun, and the CTAs were clear. Complimenting her on the overall creative, I pointed out in passing that she was missing the preheader, assuming of course that she knew what a preheader was. She didn't. So, jumping at the chance to show off my email skills, I pulled out my iPhone …

Here come the holidays -- a great opportunity to try an emotional approach with your emails. At no other time of year do we have an important marketing season that also evokes so many -- and such deep -- emotions in people's hearts. After you've optimized your offers, schedule, targeting, and so on, turn your thoughts to fitting the tone of each email to the season.