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The key to creating hyper-timely emails is planning and being nimble, says Christopher Stemborowski, associate communication strategist for marketing agency Oxford Communications. “Seeming timely can be the result of preparing multiple emails or just one email and waiting for the right time to send it.”

Build multiple versions ahead of key events: In the same way that shirts are made ahead of the Super Bowl declaring each team the champion, you can design two versions of an email to respond quickly to the outcome of major events.Plan an email for an event that has an unspecified date: Snowstorms will happen each winter. Will you have an email ready to go out the moment it happens? With a little planning, you can.Track trending online memes: In 2011, we have seen a #winning Charlie Sheen and a really excited Rebecca Black ready to have fun, fun, fun. Smart brands can tap into these memes in email blasts. You can keep track of these popular memes by viewing the trending topics section on Twitter.

Blasting irrelevant content to your email subscribers is one of the biggest email marketing mistakes you can commit.“For example, if a salon sends an email to men that highlights services solely for women, it shouldn’t be a shock when the men unsubscribe,” Stemborowski says. “To avoid this, the salon needs to know who in its database are males and who are females and then avoid sending irrelevant messages.”

“Self-selection means subscribers willingly receive emails that are in the categories they asked to get,” Stemborowski said, adding that it’s vital to keep the screening short so users don’t abandon the process.

More than ever, people are reading emails on their mobile devices. Mobile email usage increased 36% in 2010, according to comScore.

The first line of your email should never read, “If you are having trouble reading this email click here,” he adds. “Remember, the first line of the email is what shows up as the preview on smartphones. For this reason, the first line is premium real estate and, with this in mind, you should put your most important message first for a well-crafted call to action.”

Traditional television viewing is on the decline. Even when people use televisions as a device, they use connected devices to access Internet-based content via Netflix, Hulu, YouTube and other digital providers. 84.8 percent of the US Internet audience viewed online video in June. We are quickly moving to a future where Internet viewing is the norm and traditional network programming is a significantly lagging second.

there is still no reliable way to measure the return on investment. Analytics companies are getting better at tracking whether engaged fans eventually make a purchase decision, but brands are still, by-and-large, forced to look at the number of clicks a brand page feeds to its website.

The ComScore report is littered with the phrase “Fans and Friends of Fans,” signaling the strong emphasis successful brands are taking to cater to the people who can implicitly endorse them to others. If one of your friends is a fan of Starbucks, you’re more likely to be exposed to a Starbucks message on Facebook. And if you’re exposed to a Starbucks message on Facebook, you’re 38% more likely to make a purchase in the next four weeks.

“The idea behind amplification is that Fans who are reached with brand messages can also serve as a conduit for brand exposure to Friends within their respective social networks,” the report said. “Because the average Facebook Fan has hundreds of Friends, each person has the ability to potentially reach dozens of Friends with earned impressions through their engagement with brand messages.”

“While this research adds weight to the importance of social media, it also brings an important questions to the forefront – are the elevated spend levels among Fans and Friends of Fans the result of the messaging or a predisposition among these segments?

In other words, am I spending more at Best Buy because my friends like it, or because I hang out with people who are into tech gadgets? Am I 38% more likely to get coffee at Starbucks in the next four weeks because I saw a friend liked the brand on Facebook, or am I 38% more likely to get coffee at Starbucks because I run with people who like Starbucks - whether or not they choose to publicly declare so on Facebook?

Most likely, it’s a combination of both, as well as other factors including traditional advertising and proximity. In my case, I end up drinking more Starbucks than I’d like because it’s the only passable coffee shop within walking distance to my house. It’s a decision that I feel better about, perhaps because so many of my friends implicitly endorse Starbucks by liking the company on Facebook.

The figures compare to 142.1 million uniques for Facebook's desktop site during the same time and 99 million uniques who visited Facebook via their mobile devices. Twitter had 34 million unique visitors on desktop and 29 million uniques visiting from their official mobile app.

Pinterest shoppers are spending $140 to $180 per order, compared with $60 to $80 on Facebook. This gap became more vast in the days leading up to Easter, as Pinterest users started spending $194 percent (versus $84 on Facebook and $35 on Twitter).

This is not meant to knock Facebook. The social network is great for building awareness and connecting with customers

and Pinterest is better for conversions, since users already know what they want, but are simply discovering where to buy these items. Smart brands that work across Facebook and Pinterest can both build awareness and get users to buy.

If you’re trying to drive awareness and the point of promotion, I think Facebook is highly valuable. Pinterest offers a very different type of exposure.

a couple of important things about the app audience: first that it has reached critical mass, and second that it is still highly fragmented relative to more traditional forms of media

During February, for example, Flurry saw 224 million monthly actives using mobile apps in the U.S. That same month, comScore reported 221 million desktop and laptop users of the top 50 U.S. digital properties.

though the app audience is fragmented, it’s roughly equal to the (non-mobile) online audience in the U.S. today.

Figures from Compete note that Pinterest had over 18 million unique visitors in March but that growth appears to be slowing.

There is also that issue of spam and copyright questions: two no-nos for the mostly-over-36, female audience that uses the site