A lot depends on what you are putting in the subject line when sending a marketing email. It can make or break your email marketing campaign. The receivers are fed up of getting emails like “download this software for free” or “upgrade for free” or “RE: some software”. Now, it is difficult even for an email marketer to identify which emails are from a legitimate software marketer based on subject line the how someone could expect recipients to guess. And when receivers can’t identify them they think that it is spam. They will simply send the message to trash and would even report the message as spam or unsubscribe from the email program.

Irrespective of whatever action they might take you’ll have delivery problems. One should never take it for granted when you are earning the goodwill of the subscribers. There have been innumerable instances where marketers in spite of not being spammers were mistaken to be spammers and dealt with heavy fallout. This is a word of caution for anyone who is actively involved in email marketing but in particular to those who deal in healthcare, financial services, technology, and luxury goods.

The best guard against mistaken identity is the subject line which means that one must hard and get really creative to outsmart spammers. The subject line must not only be catching to the eye but also brief, informative and provide assurance to the recipients that the email came from a trusted source.

The best thing to do is to be awake and vigilant of the spammers around you. One should take a note that spammers usually use the key events to launch their spam emails like around product launches, national disasters, holidays and news events to entice recipients and make them open their emails.

The launch of Microsoft’s new operating system Vista could be taken as an ideal example here wherein every spammer try to take advantage of its release and spam everybody’s emails with promotions of vista. Now, due to this a real marketer could become a culprit. If a real marketer tries to endorse the same product through legitimate means the recipients thinking that this email also came from the spammers would simply spam it. Next morning an email marketer wakes up to see nothing but countless number of spam complaints resulting in blocking emails from this particular email marketer. What is the cause of this? It didn’t happen due to incorrect filtering of content but due to recipients not being able to differentiate between legitimate email and spam. The email marketer in this case lost both excellent reputation and good subscribers. Thus, one should realize the importance of good subject line and save oneself from paying huge price of losing reputation and clients.

To avoid falling into these traps keep an eye on alerts as well as reports triggered from anti-virus and anti-spam companies which keeps track and reports virus and spam outbreaks related to some specific events. Good thing about those reports is that they also contain spam emails with subject lines, which would help in noting down the keywords and phrases that spammers have used and thus avoiding them in your emails. Also, be careful and watchful if the email marketing program coincides with any key events or product launches and better stay away during that period. It is also not a bad idea to check your inbox and spam folder to see what subject lines the spammers are using and then stay away from those in your emails. Also, make sure that the name of the product, company and newsletter clearly shows in the subject bar to assure the recipients that it has come from a reliable source.

How many times professionals have said that senders should adopt better practices to enhance their programs but, marketers ignores it every time and commit same old blunder. They end up getting nothing but terrible outcomes and they blame them on ISPs for their tough spam filtering policies.

One of the reasons why emails are undeliverable is due to failed authentication checks. This is a key reason why marketers should keep good records of the authentications to make it easy for the ISPs to identify authentic senders and make use of the reputation data to make decisions related to delivery. More damaging is an incorrect or broken record which can be even more devastating than not having any record at all. For instance consider the case where the IP address and sender is identified by authentication and when this authentication check fails it sends out a message that the “email was not sent by me” and thus do not deliver the message. 

One of the other things that damages chances of deliverability of marketing emails is using an unrecognizable sender address. It’s a general practice among the recipients to decide what should be done about the email after reading the sender address otherwise the email is most likely going to be reported as spam or deleted right away. So, the more you try to hide your identity the more damaging would be the results.

One of the ways to self destroy a good email marketing effort is to use subject lines which look like spam or spam themselves. The subject line is the next most important thing after sender line for an email marketing campaign to be successful.

Another important point that most marketers ignore when they send marketing emails is check the list for bad or invalid email addresses. A list full of incorrect or invalid address creates a bad reputation on ISP thus increasing the chances of messages being blocked. Taking invalid addresses off of your list regularly improves the situation. Processing requests to unsubscribe and taking care of spam complaints instantly also helps a great deal.

What could be the next damaging factor to a good email marketing campaign? It is generating excessive complaints. If you accumulate lot of complaints from the receivers this affects your reputation again on ISP and they use this as a foremost factor to stop your emails. To help reduce this, immediately remove the addresses that are associated with any spam complaints you get. Not only that, take one extra step in finding out how those addresses got into your list and what commonalities they share in order to better your programs and cut complaints down.

Sending unsolicited emails is not just anyone’s liberty. Nobody would like to see any unsolicited email in his/her inbox without any reason. The ISPs judge a sender’s reputation by knowing how sender acquired the email address of the receiver like whether they solicited their permission or simply got it by spamming.

It is a tendency by the marketers to overload their emails with irrelevant text and images which the receivers may not want to see.  Always ask for subscriber’s choice in selecting the kind of content they want to receive and go one extra mile in asking any other thing that they can do to satisfy their requirements.

Few points discussed above are some of the many measures that email marketers can take to prevent the deliverability of their emails from getting damaged.

It requires dreadfully hard work to build a robust, responsive and high-quality mailing list. Just flooding thousands of emails to the list of recipients in the database won’t do the trick. The truth is that acquiring email addresses is just a small part of the large process of email marketing. It is very important to realize that the company should build an individual relationship with every person behind the email address. If the starting is wrong, every chance for building a rewarding relationship with the subscribers is instantly killed. And on the other side, if the company proves itself worthy to its list of subscribers, then many happy years lie ahead for both the parties. 

For list building some key components need to be kept into account like the method of acquiring the email addresses, how new subscribers should be welcomed, and how the relationship is maintained after the opt-in process. Acquiring the list of addresses is the easiest part of list building. But the basic rule here is to take explicit permission from the owner to send emails. Violation of this rule is going against the U.S. CAN-SPAM law regarding commercial email. This also leads to breaking of the relationship with the customer.

Addresses can be collected by online and offline means. Links for email opt-in should be posted on every page of the website, including the registration page and every transactional page. Paid search can be used to reach elevate the position in search engines results. The land up page should include a vivid link to the sign up page. Alliances can be searched who have a similar or a complementary business so to promote one’s company in return of promoting the other company. Incentives such as email only discount and free shipping can be offered to increase the subscription list. If the list is being rented from another organization make sure the list contains subscribers which have given permission. Offline means include collecting email addresses from visitors to the company, trade show or on-site. Email addresses can be asked for in appropriate situations by the customer support employees and telephone sales workers. Links for subscription can be posted in all printed material such as newspapers, flyers, magazines, bags, store signs, customer survey and feedback forms, catalogs, etc.

The next important step is to welcome the new subscriber. Because of the flood of emails filling one’s inbox, it is a tough to make one read the email and trust in it. A welcome message, with appropriate content, helps in building the relationship of trust with the subscriber. In fact, a complete welcome program must be build for this purpose. Welcoming a subscriber actually starts from the website’s registration page. This page should clearly explain the content, benefits and frequency to the subscribers. The opt-in page should be easy to navigate and shouldn’t be bothersome with numerous questions to be answered. For start four fields are sufficient: first name, last name, email address and format preferences. The other information can be collected via optional forms. After sign-up a thank you page must pop up immediately. This doses the confirmation job and leads the subscriber to the optional form. Next, a welcome email should be send to the customer. This email will not only build up the initial trust but will also check the validity of the email address. This email should include links to optional forms and the detailed preference page. It can also contain the subscription benefits and sample of the past best newsletters.

The next step of relationship management is the most important and delicate phase because of the personal relationship with every subscriber. If it is not taken care of properly, all the effort taken to collect email addresses for subscription list will be wasted. The subscriber’s preferences must be honored in order to expand the email program. The trends in bounces, inactivity and unsubscribing can be noted by the list statistics. Occasional special offers and surveys can be created for sustaining the interest of the readers. People who haven’t opened the emails for a long time should be concentrated upon, especially. Send follow-up emails and query messages.

Opt-in list building takes lots of time, energy and dedication. Certainly all the effort is worth it in the end, which can be seen by the healthy growth of the mailing list.

The unsubscribing link helps the marketers to understand their customers better. This makes them to look for alternatives which would help to retain the customers for a longer time, sometimes even forever. The whole procedure will give an insight about the view of the subscribers, how they picture the company and what are their expectations from the company. Unsubscribing customers force the company to think of a counter-option to restrain the customer from unsubscribing. So, if the whole process is designed well, it actually helps the email program in reaching its goal.

Also, it is considered as a good practice to provide the customer with the opportunity to unsubscribe.

The major reason being that if you do not provide the unsubscribe link, it is more likely that the consumers will report you to their individual ISPs as spammer. The unsubscribe link should be easy to locate and use.  Marketers include the unsubscribe instruction in every promotional emails, but they should understand that building customer trust is also very important. The customer should be given the chance to manage their inboxes by giving the unsubscribe option at other critical contact points. The first step towards this is to send the welcome message soon after the customer subscribing in order to confirm the request. Sometimes it may happen that the customer will subscribe unknowingly, especially because of pre-checked boxes on the registration form. In this case it is very important to include the unsubscribe method in the welcome email, otherwise the recipient will be forced to receive unwanted emails which can bother him to the very extend. This increases the risk of clicking the spam button.

Apart from being easily locatable, the unsubscribing method should also be very easy. This discourages the recipient from clicking the spam button or from ignoring the messages. Although one-click URL, which is a one step process, is used by most but a better option is a two step process. Sometimes the recipients do an address change; in this case one step process is the worst option. His interest or needs might even change or he might want to receive mails from you less or more frequently. Here the profile pages will be of help in reduction of unsubscribe and in giving the customers a more fruitful experience. In this method, some links takes the customer directly to the profile page and some ask for passwords to get through. If password is asked for, it is compulsory to add a ‘forgot password’ option. This adds another step to the complete process and increases the chance of the recipient giving up and clicking on the spam button out of frustration. 

The best bet is to use a two step process. The first step takes the recipient to his profile page with the help of a click. The second step helps in confirming the removal request or changes in the individual’s profile. Adding other request removal opportunities works as bonus, such as contacting the customer support if the profile page isn’t working or including web form contact information. Along with this other options for receiving information should be provided to the recipients. It is helpful to give the subscriber a chance to explain the reason for unsubscribing. 

Another good practice is to acknowledge the unsubscribe process. This helps in building trust in the email program as this tells the subscriber that his request was processed, immediately. If the subscriber has intended upon leaving the email program, a graceful goodbye and vote of thanks for their past patronage helps in strengthening the relationship. The medium used to do this can be same as the request removal.

The unsubscribing and subscribing process should be checked minimum once a month. Nearly half the marketers do not test the unsubscribe method once it has been set up and only one in four check the process only after receiving the complain about it being not working.

The success of email campaigns can be gauged by the number of email open rates. The more number of readers read the email, the greater chances of people taking the desired action. But for this, the readers must be motivated into clicking on the link.

The very first thing which any reader will notice is the subject line. It is the most important factor which should resonates with the mind of the readers and should compel them to open and read the email. The subject line should be personalized depending upon the recipient’s interest, and other factors. So creativity needs to involve creating words of motivation. The brand should make its mark so much so that the customers must set up expectations for the brand. Recipients should be anticipating the emails. For this the services or products provided by the company should meet their current needs and interest. The recipients should know what to expect when they are opening the email and they should be made to feel that they will miss something very important if they didn’t open your email.

Apart from the subject line, lot of attraction also lies in the content of the newsletter. The content must be original along with being compelling. If the content of the email can be found elsewhere, the customers may forgo the thought of opening the email and instead going for the one of a kind content. The content should also have valuable information which can be used by the readers. It could concentrate on the free offer, or the big discount.

Another factor which forces the reader to open the email is his relationship with the company. Email readers fall into different categories. They can be irregular purchasers, potential clients, information hungry subscribers or existing clients. The method by which they decided to subscribe and the reason also tells a lot about the customer’s interest. Did they find the website through a search engine or did they sign up when buying products? The subscribers who have sought for information and then signed up for the emails are more likely to open the email, when compared to subscribers who signed up while buying a product because of a pre-checked box meant for signing up which they forget to uncheck. 

A strong personality is must for the success of the email. If the actual CEO or the marketing director is behind the newsletter, the readers get more interest in the email and the email open rates will boom immediately. The email list should be of high quality and should be well-maintained always. Also, efforts must be made in expanding the email list with targeted audiences which are more likely to open the email and take the desired action. Most of the times, long-time list members become inactive. So the list must be segmented based on list age and the inactive customers must be offered interesting incentive to bring them out of the hibernation.

The mailing frequency is also a very critical issue. Too frequently send mails will hamper the growth of email open rates as the recipients will get irritated, so does scarcely send mails as the recipients will not remember who you are. The time of sending also is important. Test different time and days for finding out which time works best for every type of audience. The time of the year should also be considered here. People tend to open emails less frequently in summer which means lower email open rates. Holiday season means good email open rates for commercial emails and lesser email open rates for information oriented emails and newsletters. The number of legitimate opt-in emails being caught in the spam filters is increasing by the day. Although the message is being shown as ‘delivered’, the end recipient won’t be seeing the email at all. Care should be taken to avoid certain words and symbols which are the cause of spam filtration. 

The bottom line is to do every job exceedingly well in order to achieve higher email open rates. For email newsletters, sixty percent email open rates can be achieved and for commercial emails, about forty percent email open rates can be achieved.

The biggest boost to email deliverability is the growth of transparency since the internet bubble burst in the millennium. It took away much uncertainity associated with email marketing. Address spoofing was absent then and spam undermined the recipient’s confidence in email marketing. In transparency means the person at the other side goes according to the claims he make. Now the identity has to be proved through out the delivery chain. Authentication systems used by ISPs have been developed to check the validity of the authorized sender and then either pass along the email or block it.

Few authorization systems work invisibly while others display a visible notice in a message form. Authentication, though, hasn’t solved the phishing and spam problem, but transparency fostered by it makes the legitimate senders more vivid. Previously there were closed systems which have become open now to email senders because of introduction of transparency by reputed vendors. The IP address of the sender can be known instantly and there are websites which can show how the email pattern of a particular sender is reflected to the world. 

Things are easier for the email sender too, as they can check whether their email has been delivered or not with the help of email broadcasting solutions which have incorporated delivery monitors in their systems. Emailers who follow the best practices policies being offered by vendors, ISPs, and email industry trade groups have greatest rate of email message delivery. These policies include delivery volume, email bounces, opt-in practices, address management, IP address integrity and content trigger. According to these policies, transparency is also meant for the emailer’s personal program. The subscription process of the sender explains why the sender is is signing up, type of emails he will receive and how the unsubscription process is carried out. Depending upon the trustworthy atmosphere created by these policies, the ISP separates emails which have to be delivered, blocked and filtered.   

If messages are being send to major ISPs, the sender must watch and study spam complaints, reply to emails, and bounced emails more carefully. Permission emailers who are willing to work within the requirements of the ISP, showed how content filters which were simple and server settings which were restrictive blocked requested emails which were both transactional messages and commercial messages.

In 2003, email receiver and senders gathered to share their concerns and air their grievances. From there aroused industry working groups who tackle fraud issues and email spam. Now ISPs are also identifying and trusting emails which are sent by clients of systems of third party authentication, email certification agencies and reputed vendors which take the guarantee of the email sender’s legitimacy. The regular server lever filters now let’s go the guaranteed email which is being delivered to the desired inbox, as requested. In both email delivery and sending, transparency has helped in dealing with the uncertainty and mysteries which prevented the marketers from effectively utilizing the email and the marketing associated with it.

Now it is very easy to come out the darkness and know whether your email has been delivered or not, with the help of transparency. If it is not delivered, the notification message can be checked for details and the mistake can be taken care of so that the message gets delivered in the future.

In this email saturated period, the subscribers will get bored if the emails they receive contain messages such as ‘SALE’ or ‘Buy me’. Every other commercial email and spam has such kind of information which fills up the inbox. Thus to avoid this, information in the newsletter must include expert advice, latest trends, how to use the products, and tips. There should be numerous ways for interaction and the products should be displayed as the most anticipated products of the season. This will make the readers invest more time and eventually more money in the company’s products.

The links for interaction should be counted and not the ones for unsubscribing. The newsletters must get the readers involved in it. The reader engagement should be increased by adopting certain creative strategies. A good newsletter should have a perfect blend of interactive content, purchase behavior and also, entertainment value. Effort should be made to add at least some value to the email, irrespective of the fact that the receiver is a regular customer or a new recipient. Value can be added by giving information of latest company news, off sales announcements. Transactional emails can also be sent which includes updates and regular information such as registration, subscription and order confirmations.

Customer feedbacks are very important for revamping marketing techniques. A minimum of one web link, contact email address, telephone number and postal address should be included for collecting feedbacks. Short surveys can also be designed which have one question pop quizzes regarding company’s products, instead of statistically valid queries. The introduction to the quiz can be used in the email as a link to the actual quiz located on the website. A display of running vote’s total can also be included in the quiz topics upon improvement of the newsletter, website, or products; new ideas for product improvement; how the product changed the life of the user and others are good ideas for taking feedbacks. The best feedbacks can then be published in the next issue. Noteworthy questions can also be collected under the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ section. A small prize can help to increase the interest of the newsletter readers.

Choosing the best recommendations can be tricky, because you wouldn’t want the customers to give negative comments besides the glowing ones. The most useful among the good comments must be selected to be featured in the product spotlight. Storytelling can be added in the email as everyone is curious to know what is happening behind the scenes. History of the company, fun facts, employee perks, personnel changes and other company operations can be divulged. If the company falls amongst the Fortune 500 Company or is one of the fastest growing companies in the area, the booming business can also be discussed about. Job openings can also be posted as every company does need employees at one time or another.

Blogs are another wonderful thing. Get a blog and link it to the newsletter. A blog dedicated to the subscribers and customers helps in receiving feedbacks and comments, among which the premium quality and problem solving ones can be chosen for display. If a post generates many good comments, publish those and let the conversation carry on. Videos can also be used to promote the company and newsletters which can eventually lead to vblogs.

Personality can also be added to the newsletter, which means that if the newsletter was a live person, what it would be, male or female, fun guy or serious authority, smart or shy. Like if the newsletters are relating to pregnancy, the newsletter can be given a personality of an old and wise grandmother, who is witty and also at the same time enjoyable. Once the personality and the distinctive tone are pictured, it gives way to topic selection and copywriting. A personal note from the editor in a commercial email message can strengthen the relationship with the newsletter readers.

One of the best aspects of email marketing is that it has the ability to turn out considerable revenue from a promotional email campaign or ecommerce. But the common perception of this type of marketing is that you design your email, forward it to a list of subscribers and then wait and watch the revenue rolling in. But it is not that easy.

For an ecommerce program to be successful it takes more than just emailing the newsletter. And because of this, companies jeopardize lot of money by not dividing their customers into segments and utilizing more advanced emailing features. Segmentation can be done on the basis of demographics, personalization, actions, customers responses detail tracking and trigger based emails. By considering these variables, a lot of investment may not be made in infrastructure or technology.

The revenue of an ecommerce program can be doubled or even tripled within few months with a little extra effort, analysis, refinement and testing. The things to be taken care of here are list building, content creativity, list management, segmentation and testing.

List building is the most effective means for increasing revenue. The email subscription form must be optimized for growth of the email list. Just a good home page won’t do the trick of capturing new subscribers. An eye catching link to the subscription form must be placed on every page of the website, possibly with an impossible to miss image. Many readers expect incentives when they sign-up for something. Try to offer ‘free shipping’ or ‘$25 off on the first order’, or something like it. The email address of a customer should be captured on the shopping cart form. Then a transaction confirmation email can be sent which includes link to the subscription form. This opportunity can also be used to get additional information from the customer in order to target them better. Demographics such as gender, product interests, and preferences can be asked about.

Try to use a search engine pay-per-click or PPC program, because search is the most frequently used way for customers to buy products they desire. PPC program increases the traffic towards your website. If such programs are used, the signing up process must be made easier for visitors who have or haven’t bought products from your website. Making the website search engine optimized is the most cost effective method of getting traffic and improving your list. This optimization can be done either internally or by hiring an external SEO consultant. Every page of the website must be optimized to get the top rankings. The ‘Send-to-a-friend’ feature must be included in every eNewsletter as this feature generates a considerable amount of new subscribers. Although the number won’t be big, but it will be enough to satisfy the number of unsubscribes every month.

If the business or shop is located somewhere, in-store promotion offers can be sent via emails. Sign-up forms can be given at cash registers and subscriptions can be promoted at the point of purchase.

According to researches, a compelling subject line can increase the open rate by fifty percent. Solid offers and great design are the perfect blend for doubling the click through rate. Give customers options from which they can choose the most appropriate one which suits their appetite. The products must be divided into categories. Personalization helps in increasing the response rate. Emails can be personalized by referring to the customers by their first name or by their past purchase history. Since the email is just an extension of the website, it is better to leverage the website’s navigation. If the website has search capability, it must be incorporated in the email.   

The personality of the company should be reflected in their emails and its designs. Emails main job is motivating the recipients to click on the links to go to the website or subscription form. Some other very important links can be included, but a clutter shouldn’t be formed so that the most important one cannot be located. Graphic buttons and images can be used to draw attention. Great subject lines, top lines and offers just to wonders.

List should be managed by calculating email churns and fatigues. Incorrect email entry can be solved by including a second email entry box. Send out confirmation to check the validity. Update email address and manage account link should be included in every email.

Testing is very critical in optimizing the email program. Majority of the email variables must be checked before the emails have been send out.

Marketers usually send only one type of message to a strictly targeted list of recipients. But in reality, the email is seen by ten different types of audiences who read the message in ten different ways. Hence, it is important to create a message design which satisfies the needs of majority type of audience as possible, instead of creating a different message for each type of audience.

Things get even more complicated when audience keep shifting. It can happen that the same recipient reads the message with a different perspective from edition to edition, depending on the time or mood constraints. This problem can be solved by understanding the major email audience. Then the design tactics can be designed and the potential of the email being read by everyone can be maximized. There are eight types of audiences: Identifiers, skimmers, readers, HTML readers, text reader, mobile, desk, and searchers.

Identifiers have only one goal. They check from address and subject line to make decision amongst the other emails which have overcrowded their inboxes. They make recognition and delete the rest of the emails which they do not want to read. For such audience great subject lines and clear branding make the greatest impact. Snippet or the top line of the emails is also displayed in the preview pane, so this text is of all importance as it can help to make the difference between reading and deletion. Usually the business people fall into this category who want to clear the inbox after they arrive to the office before the first meeting or when they are waiting for their flight.

Skimmers go beyond from address and subject line by actually opening the email. But they read the email as fast as possible, noticing only headlines, subheadings and calls to action. Then they make the decision whether to delete the email or read it in detail. When the email is being designed, these copy points should be worked upon in order to deliver the central idea and guide the skimmer towards the click through. Skimmers do not even enable images, if they have been blocked. Thus, strong text content should be designed to deliver the content without much focus on the images.

Readers are a little ahead of skimmers. They read from address, subject line and open the email and read few sentences between the headline and call of action so as to learn more about the email topic. This helps them with the click through hurdle. These audience also turn on the images or click on the web version link.

Every email should have both HTML and text version of the message. Since most of the readers now-a-days are using their portable devises for checking emails, here text version will be of more use than the HTML version with images. HTML design dose takes more time, but few more minutes must be devoted to make the text version attractive. Include URLs with text as short and as clear as possible. Easily readable text messages increases the number of clicks by a great percentage.

Email design is encountering new challenge because of the growth of mobile readers. Some PDAs show HTML version correctly, while the others show lines and lines of irritating HTML code. Again, matching the right format with the right reader is important here, but hundred percent is impractical. If an interesting message isn’t being displayed properly, mobile readers will save the message to later read it on their laptop or desktop.

Desk readers are the biggest audience for which majority of marketers design emails. This audience is also the one most likely to act on the email. Design strategy used to optimize emails for other audiences will also prove effective for this particular group too. Desk readers can also be skimmers or readers. Therefore, here too, it is important to concentrate on the top line of the email, apart from the subject line.

Searcher audiences start as members of one of the other type of audience. When they see something which they like but cannot deal with it at that time they save it for later. When they have time they want to find the message in a flash. So if the message does not stand out, it will be forgotten about. Again here it is important to design the subject line, top line of email and sender address properly.

When an email program is designed and executed well it can bring more subscribers and revenue than what was targeted. If, executed poorly it will get terrible results and also anger among recipients and not to forget answering your boss’s innumerable questions.

Outlook is the most used email client, so it shouldn’t be ignored, especially the Outlook Junk Filter. But many companies do not spare time to learn about keywords and symbols with the default filter searches for. Some of the common words and symbols, which are also the most widely used, used for filtering the email as spam are ‘free’ and exclamation mark at the end of the subject line. But the word ‘free’ does not always arouse suspicion like many legitimate email marketers think. It can be used correctly and in context with shipping or sample, etc. Nobody can disagree that it is still the most effective email offer. So the key here is to know the words and how to use them so that the email does not get caught by spam or bulk mail filters.

Certainly quality costs money, which also applies to email marketing. Some marketers say that even low cost email list delivers a respectable turn over, but experts advise that more expensive list produces even bigger returns because of high quality. Another point to be noted here is that when you are mailing to an inferior quality list, you are actually harming your brand.

The subject lines of eNewsletters must not be meaningless. Examples are ‘SE Update #101’, ‘Career Journal Today’ and ‘eClub Newsletter’. These subject lines say nothing at all, when it is the purpose of the subject line to entice the recipient to open the email. Things such as issue number and words saying that this email is a newsletter are of no value; instead they should include information which will grab the attention of readers.

A target link which will work in one email client won’t work in another. For example, if it was mentioned ‘AB Company’ in the “from” line, it will be displayed as ‘marketing@ABCompany’ in AOL email client. If it is written ‘Order by Sunday for Free Shipping and Arrival by Nov 28’ in the subject line, AOL will render it as ‘Order by Sunday for Free Shipping and Arrival by Nov’. Either some part of the message is missing or the content is manipulated. So such variables must be tested in different email clients and if not, it will have a big impact on the email results.

The ease in email marketing when compared to other marketing is the immediacy of testing. If variables aren’t tested regularly then the medium is not used correctly. Successive and regular testing not only builds but refines results. Many marketers like to test on rented list, but wouldn’t mail in great number to the best performing email lists.

It is understood that the email campaign is successful when it promotes a compelling offer. Compelling does not mean that the offer should be ‘free’ or ‘50% off’, but it should be of value and relevant to the reader. The lists must be segmented and the offers made must be more relevant to the recipient’s needs, behavior and interest. When lists are being rendered, the most appropriate ones must be selected and the offer must be developed upon the needs of the targeted audience.

Some of the top email clients have emerged as big challenges for the customer oriented marketers. Every ISP has its own issue which needs immediate addressing, such as HTML compatibility issues, spam, blacklisting, and volume based filters, etc. The biggest mistake is not monitoring the results by ISP or domain. Problem is not known until it is discovered.

Everyone is becoming search engine optimized. The key to reach the top ranking on top search engines is search engine optimized content. Since eNewsletters are the best content sources, they definitely must be search engine optimized by including various keywords, so as to increase the rankings.