It's Thursday and I'm back home after four days at EIS. I recommend this event to any email marketer or IT professional looking to synthesize their marketing and technology strategy for the channel. As with many other email events, this one is not for beginners. This crowd knows that email is mission critical to their company and raises the bar on email effectiveness. Also, most of the crowd skis (except for me who has a strict policy against doing anything daring or dangerous on a business trip). So if you like to ski and manage email effectiveness for your organization, I hope to see you next December.

My "Best Of EIS 07":
Best Panel: "The Democratization of Email” with (pictured above L-R) David Baker, Avenue A/Razorfish; Jim Champlin, Allstate; Doug Purcel, 24 Hour Fitness; and Robert Frady, Live Nation (not pictured).
Best Interview: Alan Chapell interviews Kevin Olsen (see my post)
Best Case Study: "Email on the Global Stage" with Daryl Nielson and Jared Hansen from HP.
Best Meal with a Customer: The Riverhorse (customer confidential)

Fellow crazed email marketer and EIS Master of Ceremonies, Bill McCloskey manages the steady flow of presentations and speakers.

This sold-out event has included some good sessions, but the one I always look forward to is the email data "dump" courtesy of David Daniels. Some noteworthy consumer email stats he provided yesterday:

• 26 percent of the inbox is opt-in email.
• Consumers receive on average 274 emails per week to their personal address.
• 74 percent of consumers have two email accounts.
• 8 percent of email recipients triage their email inbox on their handheld first - up from 6 percent last year.

And I promise, this "snow" is not a lame metaphor for my VIP breakfast presentation this morning. Prior to the keynotes, StrongMail sponsored a VIP breakfast where we presented our value proposition to the attendees using an indie movie/Sundance spoof. From all accounts, a good time was had by all.

BTW, my Vista op'ed Dell laptop had an allergic reaction to the projector. Ironically, Craig Spiezle from Microsoft came to my rescue with a jumbo thumbdrive capable of holding my movie and presentation. Thanks Craig for being a good Microsofter and keeping my session from turning into a hand puppet demonstration!

I'll be blogging from EIS through Wednesday. Check out the photos.