I just got a smart email campaign from Business 2.0! Why smart? I guess they've heard that a lot of business people these days assume anything HTML is junk mail and dispose of it accordingly. However, they wanted to be able to track their email campaign's open rate, which you can't do if you're sending a plain text message. So, Business 2.0's marketers did the best of both worlds. They sent an email letter that looks like plain text, but is actually HTML.

The campaign is in the form of a thank-you letter from the editor to the magazine's readers. And I must say, although I know intellectually that it's a mass email, I still felt an emotional impact from receiving something that looked personal -- a regular typed note, vs. something with graphics and colors. Well done.