To answer this age-old marketing question, OgilvyOne recently started applying eye-tracking technology to email marketing messages for clients such as IBM, American Express and Cisco. Some early conclusions are that the word “free” is often skipped, and most readers see less than half of email copy.

If you’re interested in the research, you can see a heat map of the eye-tracking study here.

I’d be interested to see similar research done on email marketing messages from online retailers. I think you’d find that cluttered, complex messages so common to these types of email marketing promotions are skipped over by many customers. The challenge for the online retailer is to create compelling messages that get people to click to their web sites where true value propositions can be exposed.

Two new laws pertaining to email marketing go into effect today in Michigan and Utah that pose stiff penalties to marketers that don’t comply. Rather than explain the laws here, you can check out Clickz News or find out what you need to do to comply at Marketing Sherpa (this link is good only until July 10th).