We had another great turnout and discussion during this week's Habeas Huddle webinar. I had the pleasure of presenting with Jeanniey Mullen, founder of the Email Experience Council and CMO of Zinio, David Daniels, VP of JupiterResearch and Des Cahill, CEO of Habeas.

Key Takeaways to Consider:

1) Email and the Web will continue to maintain their leading positions as preferred communication channels through 2013, despite the rise of fast-growing channels like web meetings, social networking, blogging, instant messaging and video conferencing.

2) Email is proven, scalable, cost effective and is not going to go away; it's core to your digital company's success.

3) Users have growing concerns about becoming victims of fraud via email and the mobile web. However, users do prefer emails and make purchases online from businesses they trust.

4) Embrace customer empowerment online and their need for control and certainty, or risk losing customers and your competitive position.

5) Email reputation management absolutely helps to ensure email trust and online results.

We also received a number of questions from attendees; here's some Q&A to consider:

Q: How do you know if you have a good 3rd party reputation?
A: From a receiving perspective, we recommend you do a free Reputation Check that takes Habeas 24 hours to complete; this is also referred to as an email blacklist check.

Q: Do you have any tips for the 55+ market or trends with senior audiences?
A: Like any audience you're trying to engage and serve, know their hot buttons and communicate with them based on their expectations. Font sizes, content and creative should be easy to read since vision tends to decline as we get older.

Q: Should I send weekly emails?
A: It depends! Simply put, every customer has unique needs and expectations. Habeas suggests setting expectations upfront and using a preference center to help understand and segment needs that can then be applied in your email and outbound strategy. Operate with the recipient in mind.

Q: With email trends growing, at what point do internet users become overwhelmed, desensitized and apathetic to content?
A: Email is growing because of demand. Like anything, it's difficult to say when a good thing is too much -- but internet users have options to request and filter content via email, and are more empowered to hit the "this is spam" button.

To ask Habeas experts specific questions about your email strategy, operations and programs, please contact us and we'll do our best to provide useful information.

If you haven't already done so, take advantage of and share the on-demand webinar. Don't forget to download the new white paper just published by the Economist Intelligence Unit -- research that was co-sponsored by AT&T, Concep Global, Habeas, Nokia, PwC, SAP and WebEx. The webinar and white paper are free, factual and will likely spur some great ideas and content for your 2008 planning and execution. Stay tuned for more great content.