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I have liked email as a communication medium ever since I worked at a particular
company that allowed the inclusion of a "personal name" in the header. You could
set it to say anything (staying reasonably attentive to etiquette and
company values).

Many chose famous or little known quotations. Others kept it simple with a name and perhaps a department and/or title.

I liked the ones with a sense of humor. Had one from the movie "Rainman" for quite
a while: "HE IS ANSWERING A QUESTION FROM A HALF HOUR AGO!"

(I can't explain this here, you'll have to see the movie to understand it. At the time, many had.)

There is a lot of room for creativity of expression with email, although unfortunately there's a segment that wants to be _negatively_ creative with it as well, paving the way for all sorts of protective measures. It has been an ongoing battle.

An article I read about a few years back in Tech Republic ended with the observation:

Email Reputation and Certification will be very important soon. Large email senders will want to seek Goodmail, or SenderScore, or Habeas certification. [...]can't predict how prevalent they'll be or how soon[...] but if you plan to do a lot of email marketing, start studying up on those services now.

From my personal perspective, where that stands as of 2011 is hard to say: the SPAM filters for many major providers, search engines and anti-virus programs seem to be handling mail delivery in many cases more aggressively than ever (still depends on what you have).

Some are using "contact management" software, but regardless of what is used, what matters is if the message is seen and read. Good old statistics are showing that text messaging is outpacing email in this regard.

As I write this, a search on "email open rates 2011" yields a variety of sources reporting a drop in percentages anywhere from the high teens to the high twenties, compared to text messages with an open rate ranging from the seventies to the high nineties. Not only that, but response rates are similarly reported higher. And the mobile market is the fastest growing segment of online users, projected to surpass desktop usage in the next few years.

While I believe email will not be fading into memory (literally) for some time yet, it will be interesting to see how creative text messaging is and becomes. Reaching people through mobile will certainly be a critical part of reaching them any other way, i.e. if you like the 100+ character message, you might allow an email sent from time to time. Certain principles will remain: a relevant and intriguing subject header, clear points, and respectful periods between contacts are all part of both of these methods of communication.

Diverse Elements now has a mobile version of the main website and a mobile version of the blog as it expands services in the mobile space. Crafting text messages is going to be an additional specialty that I'm looking