• Sometimes the design of opt-in email message is not quite good. It cannot motivate enough the receiver to sign in, because the only box with “sign in here” call-up without any explanations why the receiver should sign in is not enough to make potential subscriber add his or her email to your list. Of course, it is not related to those persons who already are vested in the topic.
• One more mistake is to make too long pause between the sign in confirmation and the next message. It is often happens that the only thing that make subscribers know the process of signing in was successful is the web confirmation, but nothing arrives to their mail-boxes. In this way subscribers will soon forget about their subscription. An immediate message should be sent after subscription. It doesn’t matter the message is two or more weeks old and a new message is almost ready to come out. The subscriber should feel he or she is already a member of certain community and is happy about it, because have received the needed information due to your emailing.
• Another one mistake is to offer too many choices. It may happen that a single subscribe link may lead to a page with a lot of different newsletters and the subscriber remains confused about the abundance of offers. Thus the user becomes overloaded with information. It would be a better idea to narrow down the number of choices. Or if there isn’t another way you should think of grouping them into separate categories. Unorganized information puzzle subscribers and they often cannot find a really needed newsletter to subscribe to.
• Not many email marketers consider a good idea to notify subscribers about what kind of email messages they will get. Of course it is good if the newsletter presupposes to contain not only information and content not related to Web site, but also descriptions of different goods, which will soon be available on the Web site. But still not all of your subscribers are interested in everything, so you don’t have to overweight subscriber with extra information he or she is not actually interested in.
• Too complicated signing in process cannot guarantee the visitor will complete the process till the end. Moreover there are known such cases when to chose a particular newsletter mailing the visitor has first to provide his / her email address. Such opt-in process will definitely only destroy the reputation of business and will make people frightened of your mailing, it will looks like buying something before seeing it.

To sum up, we have to notice that opt-in offer and process are the first two things the visitor gets accustomed to your email marketing campaign and your business as a whole, so it definitely presupposes a very attentive approach towards it to get a positive feedback.

So sending the same message to your entire list you should take into consideration, your message will be or will not be read by eight different audiences of people, who have different views of how it should be read. Therefore, sending only one email message to all of your subscribers you should first create it so that it would affect almost the same to all kind of audience. That’s why it is vital to determine what you major audience is. To create several specialized email messages for every audience would take to many resources and the best way would be designing an effective message, due to using tactics that is able to maximize the influence and provide some guaranties that all your subscribers will read and adequately comprehend the message.

Here are the audiences we were talking about:

1. Identifiers. This kind of receivers is always in a hurry. A quick look on the “from” line is enough for them to consider the message for reading or deleting. They try to clear their inboxes as fast as possible, so a catchy subject line will considerably increase the chances of your message to be read. A great design of preview-pane will be an immense advantage that will provide subscribers with the information about email message content.
2. Skimmers. This category of your list opens your email message, but they want to read it as fast as it possible. They mainly read headlines, subheads, calls to action and according to this information they decide whether to act or not. That’s why such parts of your email message as headlines and so on should reflect the main subject of your message. In most cases skimmers will disable your mages, so you have to pay enough attention on designing a proper no-image version of your message with no losses in attractiveness of it.
3. Readers. These subscribers basically read some sentences from the middle of your email message. After this procedure they are ready to decide whether they want to learn more or not about the specific topic discussed in email. This category is more likely to click-through, view all the images and also view Web version of email message.
4. HTML Readers. These subscribers prefer to view your email messages in HTML format, with al the images and graphics. This is also probably the most popular valiant of designing email marketing messages. The HTML version takes more time to be created, but the result is that you influence on comprehension of your subscribers not only through plane text, but also involve their visual perception that can guarantee a better impact.
5. Text Readers. Appearance of portable devices considerably increased this kind of audience and made text format a necessary add on for email messages. Even though it takes you a lot of time to create an HTML format email message, always consider to create a full text format version. Make sure that all the links are good in your text version and the text itself is clear and attractive.
6. Mobile Readers. This category appeared due to possibility that enables to use Internet through mobile phone. It is hard to create a message that would fit all the PDAs. That’s why you should pay attention on designing your email message so that the first several lines would be perfect, because in most cases these lines is all that PDA’s user may read. They are the most likely save the message to read it later on a laptop or desktop. So with just few sentences you have to persuade your subscribers to save the message and later click-through it.
7. Desk Readers. This is the main and the biggest audience. They are the most likely to act on your message. Everything that you do to optimize you email message for others will also work here and guarantee a better effectiveness. But remember that these subscribers can also change their audience from time to time, depending on different circumstances.
8. Searchers. Usually they are members of one of the categories above. They can notice something interesting in your email message but have no time to read it right away and that save the message to read later. If they cannot find your message later it will definitely be overlooked. For these readers you have to include the brand name in the sender address line and offer in the subject line.

To deal with all these audiences you have to integrate all design tactics to create a maximized email marketing message for multiple audiences with different interests, platforms and even with different views on how the message should be read. Such approach will definitely increase your chances for success no matter what audience it is addressed.

So it is definitely worthy to monitor your Reply-to Inbox. Of course, it isn’t necessary to be you who accomplish this task, but anyway the monitoring should be done by somebody.

It should be noticed that the main quantity of such replies are generated automatically, but they shouldn’t be considered bounces. As it was said before a list may generate about 2% of replies, sometimes even less, but they can influence a lot on list integrity. The main part of replies are “out of office” reports, but there are several other types of reply messages you may get from your subscribers or automatically. These are auto-acknowledgements, challenged emails and inactive email addresses, etc.

“Out of office” replies. The amount of out-of-office replies is the biggest one you can get in your Reply-to Inbox. You have nothing to do with these email messages. But you have to remember, that mostly during holidays and vacations the volume of out-of-office replies grows extremely fast. That has a negative influence on your email marketing campaign.

Sample: I will be out of office for a week since September 20 till September 27 and will not be able to check emails. In urgent cases contact me…

Auto-acknownedgements. You don’t have to reply to them the same as to those of out-of-office replies. But after you get such replies you have to check your list and delete this email address. Removing is required because such replies come from robots, but not from person.

Sample: Thank you for your interest. We will try to respond within the next 6 hours.

Inactive addresses. In most cases such email messages notify you that the email owner has abandoned the address or it may contain update information. So the actions you should undertake are to check your list and remove the old address and insert the new one if provided.

Sample: Hello, as of January 10th 2007 I am no longer Company X worker, please contact me through…

Challenge-response requests. This category of replies is the smallest one, but the same the most important. In cases you get such email messages you have to reply immediately on them, otherwise your subscriber’s email system will never allow your email message to be delivered to recipient. This measure is used to protect user form spam messages. So if you do not consider replying on such messages your email can be blocked or delivered to a spam folder.

Sample: To confirm you are not a spam source, but a live human, please, respond to this message and leave the subject line intact.

Other messages that may be sent to your reply-to inbox are blocks and bounce reports and messages from subscribers that discovered any bugs in your message or just want to unsubscribe. The reports should be worked on as soon as possible, because they contain the exact cause of blocking the email. Thus you have to pay close attention to improve your sending and take off the elements, that cause blocking and bouncing. The same you have to carefully examine the problems subscribers report to you about and fix them as soon as possible.

You should also check all other tech-addresses to be sure you didn’t skip any important information about your email marketing campaign.

It is already wide known that permission based email marketing is much more successful and presupposes a greater positive feedback then the email marketing campaign, which doesn’t consider permission. But for a huge number of email marketers the issue of permission still remains an issue, they are arguing about. That means that a lot of email marketers didn’t discover the great usability of permission based email marketing. Why is it so?

Other marketing channels influence a lot on adopting the principle of permission in email marketing practice. Not all of them require permission. That allows beginners in email marketing think that if permission is not necessary while using radio, TV, printed materials or direct mail it still could be missed in email marketing too. Of course they get good enough results without permission too, but while comparing these results with results achieved by email marketing based on permission it differs a lot. Is average your level and is the top of your email marketing goal?

The main feature of permission based email marketing is in attitude towards your mailings from the part of receivers. People do really appreciate the information they want to hear from you. Here are the advantages you can benefit from if using email marketing primarily based on permission:

• better response rates
• increased trust and brand affinity
• better deliverbility

Most email marketers, who do not consider using permission, are afraid to spend extra money and time to create a valuable permission-based email list and create highly targeted and relevant email messages. But this is indisputably worth those money and time spenditure. You should always remember the size of email marketing list has nothing common to email marketing campaign, but something that is really answerable for it is the quality of email marketing list. Permission allows you to build a strong and trustworthy relationship between you and your customers and subscribers. Thus the responses you get with permission are around five times better then those without permission. So if you can make better results with considerably low expenditures will you still want to be on average?

Permission tricks.

What else you should know about permission is that not all kind of permission has the same effect. Two different kind of permission can be identified: expressed and implied. While the first case shows the initiative from the part of user, the second variant of permission – implied permission – presuppose a silent consent. Expressed permission presupposes user itself to express his / her desire by checking the blank boxes, thus making his / her choice. Prechecked boxes may be unchecked, but in most cases they remain checked; therefore the choice was already done before and user only has to agree with it or not. In second case the actions look like mechanical and as the result larger number of opt-outs is observed.

So, the only best variant is to choose expressed permission, which also has its own particularities. The term opt-in is the equivalent of the term permission. Opt in can be single or double. After single opt in the subscriber is automatically added to the database, while double opt in procedure requires an extra confirmation through email or through any other means specially designed for this purpose.

Permission-based opt-in advantages

• 1. A considerable increase of open rates is noticed after you switch form opt-out to opt-in email marketing. The raise from 0.5%-3% to 5% or even 10% and more definitely is an advantage.
• 2. Unsolicited email will never guarantee you your email message will be read by receiver. While getting unsolicited emails recipients are more likely to delete it. Recent findings show how important permission is to succeed in email marketing. Only 5% of recipients are eager to read an unsolicited email and 61% will be curious about solicited email and probably will read it. Here is the chart:

• 3. Unsolicited emails create annoyance even if email isn’t spam. Thus sending unsolicited emails can influence negatively on potential new customers desire to buy your products.
• 4. People are more likely to open emails from people whom they know and trust. Most of respondents replied that they open commercial emails because they recognize the brand name, what means they will not consider opening emails from somebody they don’t know.
• 5. Recent case studies discovered that the higher level of privacy is the higher intention to open that email message the subscriber has.
• 6. CTR’s are much higher on house lists, because of trust, subscribers show towards email marketer. Still the results may vary from type of list: B2B or B2C.
• 7. AOL users are more likely not to unsubscribe due to double opt-in option. Single opt-in procedure results about 22% of unsubscribes, while double opt-in procedure only about 8%.
• 8. After “Report as spam” was added to AOL 8.0 its users were more likely to report unsolicited emails as spam. The number of such reports almost doubled, because people consider reporting as one of ways to stop unsolicited emails.

Permission email also makes sense because you save money while use it. Denying opt-in you spend money at people who are not interested in you, your products and services. Thus the benefits of using permission-based email marketing are obvious, but you are the only one who decides to use this practice or not.

Unfortunately, to use this short call to action to motivate subscribers is nothing more than a huge mistake. Including this call to action into their email messages email marketers presuppose subscribers will undertake a definite action, for example click-through, buy, send to a friend, etc. Of course it is absolutely clear for email marketer what exactly subscriber should do, but the picture is differs much if we look on it with subscriber’s eyes. “Click here!” call to action doesn’t give your email reader enough information on actions you expect him or her to make. The same it doesn’t show clearly the benefits subscriber will get if he / she will finally click on it.

While designing a particular call to action you should not forget that it has three elements, which include the action you want the subscriber to take, the words you use to express the call, and the call design (text, image, location). To cover all the crucial elements of a strong call to action while designing it, you may use the following strategies:

• Separate the click from the call. Email marketers are too limited in free space while creating their message. However they have to use this space at its maximum and figure out how to persuade subscribers to click a link. For this purpose they use a call to action, the phrase that provides the subscriber information on like what his / her actions should be. This information should be included in just few words. Here the mistake is almost always made: email marketers use to think that if the call to action “click here” is short and contains the instruction, subscribers will definitely follow up these instructions. On the contrary, subscribers won’t undertake the needed actions. This simple command became a popular call to action due to its simplicity. We all do understand the word “click”, and everybody is able to imagine what exact action you want them to take. But the main problem is that subscribers don’t understand what they need it for. Even though the click is also used to measure different kinds of metrics to determine the level of success of the whole email marketing campaign, it is still not enough informative to motivate people. Instead if using “click here” call to action you may use such phrases as “Buy now!”, “Learn more”, etc. Such calls for actions are considerably more informative. So you have to be realistic and think out what actions your email message should inspire the subscribers to take.
• Express the call to action clearly. After you know exactly the action your email message should inspire, you have to think about a proper design, so that people will understand what they have to do and how they will benefit from that undertaken action. The advantage you offer to your subscribers should be expressed as an action. It depends on the email’s type and purpose. Marketers whose main purpose is to sell something should create such a call to action that will be able to make people visit the lending page. On it they have to use additional calls to action. For example, they can use the following call to action: “See all 10 models here.” If the main reason is to inform subscribers about something you need them to read all the information. In such case the best variant of call to action would be “Learn more about new marketing technologies”. Such call to action is both motivating and informational. A key point you have to remember regardless of the concrete purpose of your email message is that you call to action shouldn’t be repeated more than once; otherwise it will become annoying and could provoke completely different actions.
• Add links generously. In most email messages the call to action is a clickable link. But to use only that link to direct subscriber to the lending page is not quite rational. Newsletter readers sometimes chose to click on headlines, so you have to make them ale to do that. While sending commercial emails the situation repeats. Here you have to consider additional links to make images and service names clickable that lead directly to the lending page.
• Use text to make call to actions attractive. Call to action is the part of your email message that has to catch the attention of your subscriber and motivate him / her to take the action you want him / her to perform. One of the simplest ways to make your call to action noticeable is to write it in bold, to increase the font size.
• Location. Readers are often likely to click on logos, product image and brand names and sometimes they do not get expected results, because they are not hyperlinked. Don’t forget that there are cases when images are blocked. In such way the link is blocked to and subscriber is not able to reach the lending page. Image maps presuppose you have already designed the special place where user should click, but it considerably complicates users’ respond to your offer. So the best solution is to make the entire picture clickable and do not forget to insert an ALT tag so that the call to action could work even with disabled images.

Thus, the main idea is to make it easy for your subscribers to understand not only where to click, but also why to do it and what benefits are waiting them on this way.

In general, we can say that it is a usual case when inactivity rate is between 30% and 50%. But why should you calculate this rate especially for your list? The main reason is that after you calculate your inactivity rate you are able to plan, how many people you are going to re-engage and how many new people you need to attract to you list so that the size of it won’t lessen, but grow. Anyway you should take into consideration two particularities:

1. List inactivity cannot be avoided no matter how sad it is. The most active and involved users are always the most recent users. First three months are the months of the greatest drop-off, but the situation changes into good due to stabilizing after about a half an year. Still the time frames are approximate and the mail factor they depend on is your mailing frequency.
2. Knowing your inactive rate allows you to elaborate a plan of increasing your email marketing list. You can consider re-engaging or just start collecting the need number of subscribers well before the volume of the list will become dangerously narrow. At the same time you can chose a direct approach to those inactive subscribers and either try to involve tem again or just unsubscribe them.

So, are there any other measures you should make to follow the list inactivity? There is one more metric that is considered a key one for determining the list inactivity. This metric is called “email list hurdle rate”. It calculates the loss rate that you need to overcome to develop your list. Calculating this metric will let you know how many new-comers’ email addresses you will need to add to your list so that they replace those who leave and also will create subscribers in plus.

There are two more metrics which are related to list inactivity: list churn and list fatigue.

List churn

This metric reflects the number of subscribers who leave your list during a definite time phase. According to researches a usual annual churn rate is about 30%. The parts it could be divided into are the unsubscribed and the hard email bounces, it constitutes 2% and 20% to 30% respectively. And also something that no one email marketing campaign could be held without are spam complaints.

List Fatigue

List fatigue is much harder to deal with, because you are not sure about your subscribers’ intentions. List fatigue means that your subscribers simply became inactive. Thus you are able to choose to re-engage them or to unsubscribe them. The best variant is to send those inactive recipients extra email reminding message, with proposal of new options to chose from, and of cause one of links should be the unsubscribe link.

It is a proven fact that the longer subscribers are on your list the less their activity is. Recent reports notice, that the highest open rates (58%) could be obtained during the first month from subscription. In two months the open rate falls 13%. After half a year the open rates are 37%. In two years the open rate is about 33%. These numbers are all averages, but still they show the real tendencies you should always take in consideration.

The factors that may cause the open rates decline are multiple:

• Source. A part of your subscribers were motivated by special offers or bonuses to sign in. they will definitely lose their interest in your email messages after the special purpose is over.
• Expectations. The content of email message should always be relevant to the needs and desires of your subscribers.
• Frequency. People are more likely to leave your list if the emailing is too annoying or too rare. Low frequency allows subscribers to forget about their subscription as fast as too frequent emails irritate them.
• Poor start. Your first email message should be emailed as soon as possible.
• Irrelevant content. In the relationship with the subscriber you are the part that presupposes to email needed information to the subscriber, who can become a future customer. The subscriber counts just on information he or she is in need and no other one. They will never be for a long period of time with you if the content of email message won’t satisfy and correspond to their needs.
• Interest change. It often happens that the preferences of your subscribers can suddenly change.
• Competitive newsletter. The advertising or promotional message you send has to compete with several dozens of similar emails.
• Unsubscribe process. If the process of unsubscribing is too long and difficult the subscriber will more likely chose to be inactive instead of spending the time on signing out.

To prevent your list from subscribers’ inactivity you should take special measures that should become the key rules of your every email marketing campaign. For example you don’t have to wait long time to engage your new-comers, but should try to do it right away. Send them messages as soon as possible. You may also include “best-of” list, which will represent the most popular and useful articles. To organize more personalized emailing, send a quick survey targeted on determination of expectations and preferences of newbies and your other subscribers. Don’t hesitate to ask you subscribers about their attitude towards the design and usability of your email messages to make them more relevant and useful. Always consider segmentation and personalization. Finally, if user still decides to opt out make the process as easy as possible, otherwise long unsubscribe option will cause list’s activity decline.

Of course it doesn’t mean you have to drop anyone who doesn’t respond or click. On the contrary, you have to try to re-opt-in such subscribers. But before applying any efforts to improve the situation try to determine why it happens to you list. There are 3 main causes:

1. A lot of addresses, which are in your list, were not based on permission.
2. The list is out-of-date and contains a lot bad email addresses.
3. A part of subscribers did forget they’ve ordered your emailing.

To manage the situation and resolve the problem of high inactivity rate try to run a re-opt-in campaign. Send email letters that will remind subscribers they are on your list. Consider including unsubscribe link in such email, but don’t also forget to attract the attention of your subscribers to changes or interesting information. Let them update their data if needed, etc.

Finally, if you don’t have any replies or you get emails bounces, you can delete such emails from you list, because sending email messages to such emails is only waste of money and time.

It is very important how you start to build your email marketing list. The beginning determines rather you will attain the needed and so much desired results or not. Try to pay your attention on how you get the addresses for your contact list, how you greet your new-comers, and how you run the relationship after the subscription.

There are a lot of different ways to collect new email addresses for your list. The most important detail is permission. You should know that the fundamental rule of building of each email marketing list is to get permission first. There are rules which restrict the activity of unconscientious email marketers, so to obtain the explicit permission to add the email address to your list is a vital option that never should be ignored. Following this simple rule will guarantee you from violating someone’s rights, the same as the US CAN-SPAM Act or any similar law.

You always have to maintain the interest in your email messages. The best way to start grow this interest is to chose right welcome. Some of email marketers may consider the first welcome their first email sent, but it is not quite right. The welcome starts already on the sign-in page, and namely opt-in page became the decisive factor. What is really important to remember, that you have to design it for your visitors (and maybe future subscribes), but not for you who already knows everything about it. Try to view it with the potential subscriber’s eyes.

Never reduce the attention to the subscriber after the sign-in procedure is finished. The actions you undertake have a great impact on how long the subscriber would like to present on your list. Consider extra motivating sources such as bonuses and so on to keep in touch with you subscribers. Otherwise the number of your active subscribers will lessen with every minute. What will be the result? – Of course a big, but “dirty” email marketing list, where the quantity plays bigger role then quality. Thus, such email marketing list is not useful.

We would like to purpose you some strategies to clear you list out of inactive email addresses.

1. The first step is to determine which are nonresponders and segment the list on two big categories, one of which should contain the emails with no actions that could be associated with them.

2. The second step is to create a list of nonresponders, so that later we would be able to send them a “re-opt-in” email.

3. Then send an email with the following elements included:

• Text format (to determine whether HTML caused email blocking)
• Subject line: Special Notice Regarding Your Subscription
• Personalized greeting and subscriber details
• Date when the subscriber joined the list
• Re-opt-in link
• Link to recent issues or current offer
• An unsubscribe link

4. Consider monitoring the replies on your re-opt-in messages

5. In most cases there won’t be any replies at all, but before you delete an email address from your list you should be sure it is inactive address. Only after you are absolutely confident, you may delete all the dead emails from the original list.

Following such simple strategies to accomplish strategies will definitely help you obtain an up-to-date and valuable email marketing list.

Analysis of major performance metrics

Such analysis is the key element in analyzing all the email marketing campaign. It can be considered initial data polishing up. Try to monitor any relevant statistics, which may include referrals, open clicks, CTRs, bounces, etc. The next step is to determine the worst and the best performing message for each metric.

The question also is what exact metrics should be examined. First of all, of course, you should pay your close attention to key metrics such as open rates, CTRs and bounce rates. All other metrics you need to analyze depend on your goals and should be chosen according to the objectives. The list of sample metrics may include the following:

• Click to open rate (number of unique clicks divided by number of unique opens)
• Delivery rate (email sent vs. emails bounced)
• Unsubscribe rate
• Referral rate
• Number of spam complaints, etc.

While deciding what exact metrics should be analyzed you should not forget that the list of such metrics may differ from one to another type of business. Something that is vitally important for one may be of no use to another. So never try to follow the example of a foreign email marketing campaign.

Another parameter you should pay your attention on is consistency. It may show you some problems with delivery or any other matters, while the metrics are not steady.

The same determining your message highs and lows and analyzing your message metrics variances may provide you very important data on your email marketing campaign. Too different results should definitely attract your attention. They may signal about the necessity of extra changes to be done.

Examination of recipient, surveys and Web site feedback

Try to analyze the emails received throughout the year. Consider every positive and negative comment. Lack of replies from your subscribers may mean you have not motivated recipients enough to get the feedback from them. Analyze your each survey’s data collected and Web site statistics to organize your email marketing campaign better for the next year.

Comparison of internal and external criteria

Use the data you get to compare campaign if performing more than one email marketing campaign. Or you may ask for this information to be provided by your partners or fellow email marketers. Also consider “industry averages” to compare your metrics with. It may confirm you campaign is on track. But never consider “industry averages” to be absolute ones.

Review of creative and design

Try to compare all your messages, subject lines, etc. Determine which design was the most successful, which was the weakest one. It will help you improve email message design, so that it becomes attractive, catchy and motivating for subscribers. Finally, compare your email messages to those of you competitors. Try to determine weak sides of your design and improve it.

After all the analysis is done and the end-year report is prepared, you can start planning a next-year campaign and try to avoid the mistakes of your previous email marketing campaign.

1. Permission is required. While sending unsolicited email messages you irritate your subscribers. This may lead to decrease of appreciation of your brand name, which will be considered less trustworthy or not trustworthy at all. Collecting the email addresses with already pre-checked boxes is not a quite fear way of building your email marketing list. This method presupposes you make the chose that should be done by your subscriber, but isn’t done because he or she is too lazy to uncheck the box, if the real desire is not to subscribe. Use a double opt-in option, so that your list would be free of future spam complaints.
2. Sender reputation. Never send too many email messages, too often and to too many bad addresses, you may be blocked by as ISP. The same problem may arise if you produce too many spam complaints.
3. List “hygiene”. Keep your list clean of bad email addresses, which are likely to harm the campaign’s performance and reputation.
4. Enter a “whitelisting”. Usually some ISP’s distinguish common senders from spammers. Thus it would be a good preventive action to contact your ISP and request to be included in its “whitelisting”. Such measures can guarantee your email message will reach your receiver, but not will be forwarded to his or her junk or bulk mail.
5. Delivery test. Before the message would be sent to your subscribers it should be carefully tested. It often happens that HTML emails full of pictures and graphics may not be viewed properly in all email clients and ISP-based email services. Also pay attention to your HTML code, so that you won’t be blocked because of mistakes in it.
6. Tend to trust. Establishing truthful subscriber/customer – email marketer relationship is a one of the crucial moments in the whole email campaign building. A huge part of success depends completely on subscribers’ trust, the same as without trust you will never get the estimated feedback. Without trust you will also feel the lack of permanent subscribers who would be more likely to leave your emailing.
7. Recipient’s privacy. Always pay much attention on subscribers’ privacy, make them feel protected and confident in your actions. Your every email should contain a brief description of your privacy policy and a link on its full version.
8. Satisfy the needs of your subscribers. You should email only relevant email messages, and send them with right frequency and in right format. If your subscribers doesn’t get what they want, they will start find it somewhere else, as a result leaving your list.
9. Recipient’s data managing. Your subscribers always should have access to their subscriptions. They also should be able to contact you and have the possibility to forward the message to others, the same as get extra information if needed. The best way to let subscribers do all it is to include a special section at the end of each email.
10. Testing again. Never forget to test. You should test everything you want people to do or you want it to work correct. You should make identify of what attributes work the best in emails.
11. Email Value Proposition (EVP). Your recipient may get a lot of emails every day, so you have to make everything the subscriber would know the message worth to be read.
12. Consider list segmentation. Use the personal data you’ve collected on sign-up to segment your list so that your email marketing campaign would be more targeted. You also will be able to monitor demographical tendencies.
13. Consider personalization. The data provided by your subscribers should be used to make email messages you send more relevant and each subscriber oriented.
14. Design & Format of message. Bad format and improper design makes it very difficult to navigate your email message, which leads to sing-outs or spam complaints. It is very important to test your messages on different email programs and Web services.
15. Inbox design. The subscriber should be able to distinguish your email in his/her full inbox. Write your company name in the “from” line and design a catchy “subject” line. Prepare your email message for preview panes.
16. Maintaining deliver value. People are likely to change their preferences from time to time. so to make your email messages up-to-date try to survey your subscribers about their likes and create your messages, so that they satisfy their needs.
17. List quality. It is more important to have the list of good quality rather to have a big list, but full of bad mails and emails that will bounce.
18. Other marketing channels. To increase the impact of your email marketing campaign try to use other marketing means, such as TV, direct mail, etc.
19. Goals. Instead of concentrating efforts on getting good metrics, you should focus on goals.
20. Use email marketing software. It will help you create highly personalized email messages, segment your list and send specific emails to subscribers based on their email actions.
21. Never save on resources. Some marketers chose to use email marketing because it is cheaper than usual means of advertising and proportion. Still this way demands quite high investments to be really effective.
22. The laws. Such countries as US, most European countries, Asian countries and Australia have their own acts that regulate email marketers activity and protect subscribers from insulting actions from the side of unconscientious email marketers and spammers.

Try to follow these hints to create your email marketing campaign and you will definitely be surprised by noticeable positive effect.