Planning to put in alot of effort into content and link development for my main site in the coming year. One strategy I have been thinking of is concentrating on contacting only quality sites within my niche, and not only emailing requests but also calling on the phone to introduce myself and the site.
Developing personal relationships (offline) can help your business a lot. It can help you to build your business in many ways, not just in terms of links.
personally, the phone doesn't work for me -- my time on the web is intermittent and when not on the web I'm working on other things, so I like to be able to communicate over time via PM's or emails...having said that, I know alot of people who prefer messaging / voice. I think you just need to be flexible... What is your niche?
financial markets and trading/investing is the niche of my main site - I should mention that in a few cases ignored link requests turned into a good recip link when I followed up with a call...
Especially with a link request, the fact that you provide a valid phone number can make the difference between success and failure, especially if the site you would want to link to is well established(in some cases, and e-mail request simply isn't enough). F1RM
As a link building company, I totally support your plan for '07. One other idea to get quality links is to attend various events related to your business and ask people face to face about exchanging links. Then follow up with them. Make sure they are text links.