Q&As

At a time when consumers are paying more than ever to fuel their vehicles, gasoline retailers are rolling out incentives to help them forget about the pain at the pump. Shell Oil Products U.S. recently launched the Shell V-Power Fuel Your Drive …

The first U.S. municipality to legally and permanently change its name to “Dish” could be a hero among its residents. That’s because EchoStar Communications, parent company of the DISH Network, will give all the households in that community free …

E-mails and surveys have become a welcomed addition for Northwest Airlines’ WorldPerks members. The airline is giving select WorldPerks program members a new way to earn additional e-Reward dollars simply for receiving and reviewing e-mail offers and …

OptiCom Marketing Group Ltd. and One28 Marketing Group LLC have formed a new company, OptiCom MoxyCard InterACTIVE to pitch its new multimedia gift card. The company will specialize in offering branded content within the retail, entertainment, sports, …

THE ATLANTA FALCONS: are offering branded gift cards and merchandise return credit cards. The gift cards are available now exclusively at the new retail store, Falcons 365 in Perimeter Mall in Atlanta, and on the new Web site Falcons365.com. Stored …

It can be hard to develop a sense of community between franchises and their parent company, and even harder to do it between the individually owned franchises.

But Volvo Rents is tightening the communications gap all around with its e-newsletter, The Rental Channel. And it hopes to do even better when it puts the same material on an extranet.

Robert Cannon left the hardware business after 20 years to set up shop as a consultant in 2001. But when a business contact hired someone else for a job Cannon was well suited for, he realized importance of keeping his name and talents in front of prospective employers. Thus, his e-newsletter, Taking Aim was born with 150 subscribers in 2002.

The question is enough to daunt any writer: How do you come up with stories for dozens if not hundreds of personalized e-mail newsletter editions? The answer is you don’t. Instead, you should use a content database that can spit out the versions with little human intervention.

What does Matt Malloy have to do to get you out of that car today? According to Malloy, vice president of marketing for Zipcar, an up-and-coming car-sharing service, all it really takes is good word of mouth, a highly automated online system, and an e-mail newsletter full of engaging content.

E-mail is broken. And it’s broken in two major ways: Trust and infrastructure. First, the channel isn’t trustworthy. The legitimate senders of e-mail can’t trust the medium to deliver their mission-critical communications and the recipients of e-mail can’t trust that they’ll get what they want … and not what they don’t.