1/ permission
Ask before you blast. To make the most effective use of your email marketing make sure you have permission to send that email! There is nothing more annoying than receiving something that you did not ask for. Not only will it ruin your relationship with your customers, it will also show them that you are not interested in their privacy. Make sure every person on your list has agreed to receive emails.

2/ relevance
Keep it relevant. Make sure your message is finding the people who care. Once you have gained permission to send, your next battle will be to ensure that the content you send is relevant to the recipient. Why should they spend time reading something that does not apply to them? The best way to get around this is to segregate your mailing list to specific things that your customers are interested in.


3/ personalisation
Personalisation shows you care about the individual. Like receiving a birthday card or xmas card it feels good receiving something with your name on it. It shows that you are being considered as an individual and not just a number on a large list. Personalisation can be the difference between somebody reading an email and clicking delete. Take time to gather information about your customers.


4/ subject
A well thought out subject line is often the difference between your email being a hit or miss! The subject line is something that your competitors are most likely not utilising very well, but if you think about it the subject line is single most important element on an email. A bit like judging a book by it's cover, we know we shouldn't but we do. Make sure its attractive.

5/ engage
Make sure your message looks great and makes sense. Well, you have now managed to get permission to send an email, made it relevant and personal as well as get them to open it up. Now what? Engage them! You need to give them something to do of course! A call to action.They took the time to open it up, offer them something that will make them want to engage in your company. Give them a discount, a free report, a chance to win a competition or maybe information that they can use
to help solve their problems.

6/ unsubscribe
Sometimes people can't see a good thing when they have it, and by law you must give your customers the chance to unsubscribe from your emails. In most cases they will do so because what they are receiving they have no need for. This is a sure sign that you need to improve your content and offering. Get back to the drawing board and win them back!

7/ compatibility
Make sure your emails will show up on anything from the latest super computer to the oldest mobile phone. Creating an HTML email is very fancy stuff but you must not forget that a lot of people carry mobiles or PDAs that receive emails. For these people we need to provide a simple text version of the email with. Such small screens, showing off your best product images might just take 10 minutes to download!

8/ test
There's no better way to ruin credibility than to send out something full of mistakes and errors. so check, check and check again! What better way to ruin your credibility then to send something with mistakes or errors. Send test emails to ensure that it works across the email programs that your customers use. Miss this stage at your peril.

9/ analyse
The real beauty of emails is what information you get once you have sent them. Detailed reports and analysis will help you track the results. With the ability to check who opened your emails, what links they clicked, how many times they read the email, right down to the 'not so easy to accept information' such as bounces and who unsubscribed. Once you have this powerful information you know you can make future improvements and how.