As always the blogosphere has been a mixed bag covering a range of subjects, with the usual posts on general advice, discussions about specific issues, press releases, technical updates, and non-stories. This week however there seemed to be a prevalence of Hints and Tips-type posts; so here’s a few choice posts, all with great advice:

• Gaining and retaining subscribers – 10 essential points everyone should live by
• This Week’s Tips – “Getting Customers Involved” (continued)
• 5 Tips to Lower Your Unsubscribe Rates – how to keep customers from switching off
• Tips for Email Marketing Success On Any Given Sunday – American Football as an analogy
• 5 MORE Things All Email Marketers Need to Know – general hints and advice

In the same vein, there’s also been a number of “How-tos” posted covering such topics as simply how email marketing can be successful, how to keep your mail from getting unblocked, and how to merge email, microsites, and social media together for fun and profit (well, profit, at least).

Special mention this week to a post on Proofpoint’s Email Security Blog titled Email Horror Stories… Just in Time for Halloween that introduces 10 articles about situations you’ll be glad haven’t happened to you.

Much time has been spent discussing the subject of user engagement lately as it becomes more and more obvious how much of a key role it plays in the current email marketing landscape. For your edification – a few recent related posts from the blogging world:

• Engagement: The New Frontier In Deliverability? – George Bilbery from Return Path weighs in
• How to attract customers, engage them & keep them coming back – backyard birding as a study in user engagement
• Email Marketing Today: Episode 29 – “Lessons learned from WWD New Rules of Consumer Engagement”
• How Engagement Metrics Influence Deliverability – key points
• User Engagement & Email Delivery – a few quick notes
• Using Personality To Help Drive Engagement – why it’s important to show you’re not a faceless corporation
• Future of deliverability: 1 – the role of user interaction (see also part 2)
• How Can Non-Profits Send More Engaging Email? – a new study with some interesting statistics

Twitter have in the past week or two made several important changes that I think are worth mentioning, particularly because of the launch of our new Share section. One thing that I noticed this morning (being one of the lucky 5% of users getting a sneak preview) was the new ability to set up lists (apologies for the link to a slightly out-of-date post, but there’s no more recent information available that I know of, yet) – which for me is a very cool feature I have long wished for. Our own Mr Gareth Langston will be posting more about this later, so I’ll leave the details for him to describe.

Also, as many people are aware, Twitter searches will soon be incorporated into Google search results. What hasn’t been as widely discussed is Microsoft already have a Twitter search up and running – at least for part of the world (NB: I finally got it working by tweaking the URL). Finally, on a technical note, they’ve also introduced support for API versioning, which will allow the introduction of new features more easily than previously, and makes my developer side a happy little geek.

Special mention this week to Marketing Sherpa‘s recently announced 2010 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. It’s not free ($297 for the PDF-only version), but to whet your appetite there is a fairly large executive summary slash excerpt available (16 pages, including several pages for the index). The report itself contains research from 1,493 “real-life marketers” with a plethora of charts, tables, statistics, and advice totalling 283 pages of content: quite honestly the most comprehensive research on email marketing that I know of, especially when complemented by our very own UK email marketing benchmark report. Good stuff, Sherpa!