They're not putting a gun to anyone's head. Every six months, the postal service is adding another 2 cents to postal rates. And [e-mail] is now $3 to $4 per thousand. These fees won't change the business dynamic.

Consumers are increasingly managing their accounts online and more and more move in the direction of managing all accounts online.

Our latest research confirms a major change in consumers? behavior as it relates to the way they choose to interact with the brands they love and trust. For retailers with a credit card offering, this represents an enormous opportunity to craft relevant, timely e-mail communications that not only save costs but generate incremental revenue opportunities and customer satisfaction. The retailers who fail to capitalize on this opportunity will soon find themselves losing market share to those who are more actively offering and promoting this service to their most loyal of customers.

So much of retailers? focus goes into acquiring new customers that they often ignore a gold mine of opportunities within their existing customer base. Whenever a bill is presented to a customer via e-mail, the retailer has another opportunity to not only reduce costs and strengthen customer loyalty, but also to provide the customer with relevant and valued offers that can incite additional purchasing. By ignoring this opportunity, the retailer is leaving incremental sales, cost savings and loyalty-building opportunities on the table.

There is little doubt that relevant and timely e-mail communications are becoming evermore central to the development of successful integrated marketing programs that build and accelerate long-term profitable customer relationships. We are excited to move forward as an integrated company that provides an incredible client base with access to best-of-breed e-mail solutions surrounded by an incredible team of the most talented minds in the e-mail industry on a global basis.

Marketers [should] look to refine, address and deliver more relevant content based on inbound customer inquiries and business rules to further improve the customer relationship and messaging consistency across channels.