Marketers can sometimes overlook the power of very simple business practices that are as old as the hills. J.D. and I were reminded of this during a recent Business Marketing Association Roundtable in San Francisco that brought together a group of senior marketers to talk about and debate email marketing and more. Oh, and we’re not talking about formal discussions fashioned after the Socratic Method.

I was surprised by a recent eMarketer study that showed only six percent of email marketing campaigns provide the option for recipients to share messages with their social networks.

Our non-profit German American Business Association (GABA-CA) Women in Business Industry Group has implemented a number of online marketing initiatives, including:targeted email marketing to promote quarterly events, an email-based discussion group, social networking, testing and measurement, and online video. We've especially had success with email segmentation and targeted email marketing.