From time to time, eM+C Weekly e-letter readers will have an opportunity to get to know a member of our Editorial Advisory Board. This month, meet Reggie Brady, president of Norwalk, Conn.-based Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, an e-marketing and direct marketing consulting firm.

eM+C: Tell me about your company.
Reggie Brady: I'm an e-marketing and direct marketing consultant. I help companies build, execute and analyze their customer acquisition and retention strategies both online and offline. My consulting practice particularly focuses on business and marketing planning, e-mail and direct marketing strategy development and implementation, online traffic building and lead generation, and permission and privacy.

eM+C: What is your marketing philosophy?
RB: My roots are in direct marketing, and that translates into developing or refining programs so they are action-oriented, measurable and provide a return on investment. It starts with setting objectives, understanding the target audience and drilling down on results to date. I also like to do some competitive research, and there are some wonderful tools available online that can provide valuable insights. And I put an emphasis on testing. It's amazing how small tweaks can pay big dividends.

eM+C: What e-trends are you tracking right now?
RB: One of my passions is e-mail marketing, and while I keep an eye on nuts-and-bolts developments on the deliverability front, what's of most interest to me is segmentation, dynamic personalization and triggered messaging. It's frustrating that most marketers are still using the batch-and-blast approach and missing out on a huge opportunity to make their existing programs more successful. Advances in search engine marketing are fascinating to follow since driving the right, qualified traffic to a marketer's site is so important. And I'm intrigued by the developments in Web 2.0 and social networking. The online experience is certainly changing!

eM+C: What are your goals for 2008?
RB: From a business perspective my goal is to provide value to my clients, help them be successful and advise them on new trends and what that means to their business. The big issue I'm struggling with from a personal standpoint is how to be more efficient. I'm grappling with how to offload administrative and routine work and to identify partners or resources to work with on various projects.

eM+C: Do you have any e-mail marketing tips or best practices to share with our readers?
RB: This isn't sexy, but take the time to drill down on results from your programs. Pull your results into a spreadsheet and do some old-fashioned detailed analysis. Examine trends over time for list growth and basic metrics, results for various types of campaigns, results for various sources that make up your list, what subject lines have the highest and lowest open rates, what offers or content have the highest and lowest clickthroughs, and which tests made a significant difference. This will help you develop improvement plans for the future.

Reach Reggie Brady at reginabrady@.att.net.