According to comScore, more than 10 billion video clips are viewed online every month -- providing companies big and small with an incredible opportunity for cost-effective branding, product display and demonstration.   Ironically, the ability to incorporate streaming video into an email campaign was practiced in the early days of the commercial Internet, yet stymied when inbox providers and software developers started blocking javascript in email for obvious security reasons.   With cutting-edge video technologies now available and the pent-up demand for video integration with email from both marketers and consumers, inbox providers are heeding the call by developing new programs for marketers to tinker with email video delivery. Gmail YouTube Capabilities Gmail recently announced a new "Labs" feature allowing users to preview YouTube videos in emails. This technology is currently only for Gmail users, and is limited to YouTube videos, but it stands as significant progress in the move towards true video...

If you're a marketing manager for a mid-sized company and insist that your email service provider offer you a bunch a pre-fab templates you're lazy and should be fired! Pre-fab templates were great back in the day when email marketing was novel and a limited number of marketing mavericks experimented with the medium however the day of pre-fab templates for real marketers has come and gone. Just think about it, email service providers that push pre-fab templates such as Constant Contact or iContact cater to hundreds of thousands of tiny companies sending to millions email recipients. Since there is only a finite number of templates that these email service providers offer, this means that a large number of companies have the same look and feel to their email marketing efforts without any differentiation to cut through the clutter. If you're a marketing manager at a mid sized company do you really...