Because he’s doing so much public speaking on email marketing these days, we’re starting with Michael Kelly, Director of Business Development and a co-founder of the company.

Michael’s energy level and enthusiasm are such that it often seems he’s two people…because he’s doing the work of two people and he moves so fast! Michael has two decades-worth of sales experience in the telecommunications and messaging industries. Before helping to found email marketing vendor ClickMail, he was a top sales professional for Computer Telephone Corp, Pacific Bell, and Cable & Wireless.

Next to his devotion to his beautiful wife and two lovely daughters, Michael loves work more than anything. He’s the kind of guy who would keep working even if he won the lottery and had no need. Clients adore him, because he’s an expert and problem solver. If you’ve ever seen him speak, you witnessed firsthand the vast amount of email marketing knowledge he has stored away in that brain of his: He covers more in a 45 minute talk than others could in a couple of hours, and he still has trouble getting to all the points he wants to make!

Even as an email marketing consultant and expert, he’s smart enough to realize he doesn’t know it all. But when he doesn’t know the answer, he knows where to find it, bringing in other experts as needed, whether to build a custom dashboard for tracking email marketing results, or a top-notch email copywriter to tackle client copy.

Michael is a true delight to work with, both within the ClickMail company and as an email marketing consultant. If you have any questions for Michael or want his input on improving your email marketing results, start here at blog@clickmailmarketing.com.

• A top tier ESP, such as BlueHornet, Silverpop or ExactTarget
• A subject line test tool
• A rendering test tool like Pivotal Veracity’s eDesign Optimizer
• An email designer or email design team that can design emails effective even with image blockers on, who know email HTML vs. HTML used for the Web, and the limitations of email clients such as Outlook 2007
• An email copywriter or email copywriting team that understands best practices for copywriting emails and landing pages
• Web analytics
• An email marketing consultant or vendor/partner like ClickMail Marketing, to help you stay compliant, aware of best practices, and current with email marketing trends
• An email testing strategy to learn, over time, what your audience responds to (e.g. subject line, email copywriting, email design layout, timing, etc.)

If your email marketing toolbox is missing any of these items, start looking around now to make your toolbox as complete as can be. Because the better your tools and the more complete your toolbox, the higher your email marketing ROI. And in the end, isn’t the ROI what you’re striving to create?