Rethinking Email
** Disclaimer: This isn't my normal blog fare. If you're interested at all in email marketing, this article might be of interest, but otherwise it's long and potentially boring. I'm also not offering it as a prescription for how anyone should do email marketing, or email in general. It's just some observations of my own. A couple of weeks ago I was presenting a workshop in which I was talking about my recent experiences with email. The gist of the story is that a few months ago, after getting tired of the vitriol in many online exchanges, I wanted to bring a more uplifting message to people. I started a weekly email message, now called Inbox Encouragement. I was telling the group about how I was seeing open and click through rates that were the highest I'd ever seen. Open rates as high as 80% and click through rates ranging from 25-45%. At one point in the discussion I was asked if I had any idea of any of the clicks were converting. In sales language that