5 Surefire Tips for Effective Email Marketing

Over the past few years, research has continued to prove the benefits of e-mail marketing for business: low costs, high conversion rates and detailed tracking are all notable features. But e-mail marketing is becoming much more than just a tool for spammers and e-businesses. Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy on the differences between spam and permission-based emails, and more and more of them are accepting permission-based e-mail marketing as a positive replacement for direct mail.

The best news is that the majority of people who receive permission-based e-mails open, on average, 78% of them.

Jupiter Research reports effective email marketing campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and 18 times the profits of broadcast mailings. But crafting an effective business email is both an art and a science. Here is a list of factors, potential problems and effective solutions to keep in mind:

1. Spam! Spam! Spam! I don't need any Viagra!
The average consumer receives more than 300 emails a week, 62% of which are spam. No wonder there's such hostility towards the industry. But spam filters, bulk folders and "report spam" features are helping consumers become more at ease about the perils of spam. While 89% of users cited spam as a major concern in 2003, that number dropped to 85% in 2004, proportionally to an increase in the use of spam-fighting tools.

So as a permission-based business email marketer, what can you do? One tip is to remind your subscribers to add you to their "safe senders" list. The second, and most important, tactic is to make sure your email marketing service provider has a good relationship with ISPs. This will ensure that your email marketing campaigns go into your subscribers' inboxes, not their junk mail folders. When choosing an email marketing software, make sure the company has strict anti-spam policies and complies with the guidelines of Can-Spam.

2. Images and formatting: Why do my emails look broken?
Broken email campaigns are an increasing concern among email marketers, especially since several companies and web-based email providers now block graphics as a measure to combat spam. In fact, according to ClickZ, 40% of email marketing messages delivered to inboxes are "broken."

This was actually something that came up during Eliteweb's beta-testing phases, as we had a client in the Canadian Government whose recipients were mostly using highly secure email programs. The solution we came up has now become one of our key competitive advantages.

What Eliteweb does is it publishes every single email marketing campaign sent to a secure location on the web (a location only original recipients of the email can access, thanks to encrypted technology that automatically authenticates the user). The technology also ensures you can track your users' behaviors, even if they are reading your email campaign at the secure web location.

3. Personalization and relevant content: In a business e-mail, one size does not fit all.
In a recent study by DoubleClick, email users were 72% more likely to respond to a business e-mail if its content was based on the interests they had specified. That number points out the absolute importance of allowing users to choose their own interest groups and have control over which business e-mails they receive. The most popular interest categories, according to the study, are coupons and household goods.