I  had intended to  show you the email inviting me to review the Jeanniey Mullen and David Daniels book,"Email Marketing An Hour A Day," but I had an email malfunction this week and the email is no longer in my email box.

Sometime around Wednesday or Thursday I lost the ability to delete emails which would make you think I would have that email....

After spending two hours trying the DIY approach to fix the problem which included buying a new software that absolutely didn't fix the problem, I finally called my tech guy Syed.

Now on the phone I  told Syed the problem was with deleting emails but when I left the hand-written message ( because my printer was out of cyen ink and would not print even though I just wanted a black ink document..argh!) I simply wrote " can't delete files."

If I had been able to type out the problem instead of worrying they couldn't read my handwriting I would have explained that I was talking about deleting emails and I probably would have done a screen capture of the pesky message. But I didn't type the message, I wrote the message.

So Syed gives my computer to his young assistant Arafat who reads my scribbled message - can't delete files-- and he starts a complete computer overall because he thinks-- and I would have too-- that the problem is I couldn't delete any files.When the real  problem was I couldn't delete my emails.

It's always about the message.

In her book,"Email Marketing, An Hour A Day," Jeanniey Mullen has this to say about the right message..It starts with the From Line.

Use your brand name, and in a business-to-business context use personalization fields to insert the salesperosn's name into the From address so that the email appears to come from the salesperon and not the corporation.

One peak at my Inbox and it looks like the folks that are marketing to me get an "A"...lots of brand names. If it looks like my inbox is primarily marketing messages..it is and it's a very valuable one. According to the book, "Based on a mailing of 4.1 million mesages and typical response metrics, the value of an active email address is $118.09"

Here's the thing about this book - It's a serious reference book which covers every single aspect of the process of doing an email marketing campaign --and for the record Mullen says her definition of email marketing coversmore than inbox messaging - to her email marketing covers any electronic messaging.

While the book emphasizes how important the message is, the title of this book was confusing to me. Originally, I thought it meant that I could spend an hour a day and create wonderfully successful email campaigns.

That's not it at all.

This book  is part of a series of an hour a day books. Think curriculum more than philosophy. If you don't know anything about email marketing this book is formatted so you can spend an hour a day for 90 days to complete the curriculum and  feel confident about your knowledge of email marketing.

If you are already involved in email marketing, this is one of those books that you want to have as ready reference.

It also has lots of email factoids that you can use to advocate your case for doing an email campaign.

• As of April 2009, 40 percent of online consumers in the United States opt in to receive email newsletters.
• Email spending in the United States will grow to $2.1 billion in 2012.
• The authors'budgeting rule of thumb is to make your email budget and then add 30 percent on to it for the "unknowns."
• The use of web analytics to target email campaigns improves revenue by nine times more than does the use of broadcast mailings.
• As of April 2008, 54 percent of comsumers i the United States have provided their email addresses as part of a sweepstakes.
• Email spending in the United States will grow to $2.1 billion in 2012.

Some blog posts on email marketing:

Santolina.net

Online Marketing for Marketeers

Email Suck

Elana writes about business culture at FunnyBusiness