So you think you know a thing or two about email marketing? Here's your chance to prove it!  Take the email marketing quiz below and post your score on our Facebook Page.  Everyone who posts their score will be eligible to win a $100 Starbucks gift card.  Don't worry if you fail because most people do!

Today’s Facebook universal messaging system announcement sheds light on a growing industry with an increase in opportunities for marketers. Facebook messaging, which adds email to their system for the first time, will focus on four channels of communication: SMS, Facebook messaging, IM and email. Facebook users will have the ability to obtain @facebook.com email addresses as part of the new system. Three Predictions for 2011 and Beyond: #1: The Like Button Will Become a Universal Multichannel Opt-In Rather than requiring individuals complete forms, the Facebook Like button will become a universal opt-in method. This will prove to be beneficial to marketers. Because Facebook’s system will automatically detect where the user is located (either at a computer, on their mobile device or completely offline), only one method of communication will be required to reach subscribers. #2: Facebook Messaging Will Force a 2-Way Dialogue With today’s announcement, businesses reaching out to Facebook users...

Last week Gold Lasso featured a webinar discussing the benefits of RSS-to-Email. Thank you to everyone who participated and joined in the discussion afterwards. A complete recording of the Webinar is now available online, click here to review. RSS-to-Email is a hot topic these days. Highlighted by Website Magazine in the article, E-Mail Marketing’s Future… Right Now, eLoop’s new feature is included in an overview of ESPs changing the email landscape. “This is useful for people using Twitter, publishers who update their sites regularly and have newsletters based on updates, press releases, or any other type of timely content that gets posted to a website regularly." View the article here. ...

In case you haven't kept up with the email marketing industry over the past few months, it has been star of glimmering hope for marketers enduring economic turmoil. In fact, the industry has been faring so well that many email service providers (ESPs) have announced record growth for 2008 and expect to do equally as well in 2009. Even though demand for ESP services is high and clients are spending more, there is still a lot of competition. Now is the time to try to squeeze more value from your ESP, while many are fat and happy. But before you start calling your ESP to demand a rate decrease, there are some things you should know to help you get the best deal. To start with, if you're a casual email sender or use an entry-level email service provider that services small businesses, you're out of luck. Their pricing is set...

Every January email marketing pundits try to make predictions of what the industry will bring for the upcoming year. They range from the career conservative to off-the-wall reckless. Some self-serving predictions blur the line between editorial and advertising so much that only a New Year's hangover can help you tell the difference between the two. Even though the accuracy of annual email marketing conjectures can be debated, almost all have some sort of truth to them. With that being said, below are my four bold predictions for 2009 prefaced by the fact that I have a short-term 50% accuracy rate and an 80% long-term rate. So I'm usually right, eventually. The price per email for the middle and enterprise marketplaces will drop. Commercial email and the ESPs used to send them are both commodities. In a depressed economy, most commodity prices fall, especially ones with excess supply. Technologically speaking, with few...