For all the talk of spam crowding out legitimate email marketing messages, a new study suggests that those in the email business have actually been doing better lately. The study was done by Doubleclick, hardly a disinterested party, but the results still seem a bit surprising. While many had assumed that the increasing levels of spam would cause more people to simply ignore legitimate messages, the study found the opposite to be true. Lately, more people are reading and clicking through on email marketing messages. The rates are still fairly low, and there are probably other contributing factors (people more comfortable with being online, improving economy, etc.). Still, for all the talk of how dead email is for marketing, it appears there's still some life left in it. That said, I can't think of a single such email that I actually read any more.