SendLabs

1. Test, test, test - Test your offers, test your subject lines, test your creative.  Email is the most unique, measurable, and flexible direct response mechanism in the world today. For relatively low-cost and effort, you can tweak and play with the various components of your campaign to find what works and what doesn't (try that on the cheap with direct mail). Start testing and start seeing better responses. Find out if offer A outperforms offer B. Try three subject lines and slice up your mailing to see which gets better open rates. Have fun and start experimenting a bit in ’07.

2. Create a calendar - While email marketing is the most flexible marketing opportunity usually available to most marketers, this can be a dual-edge sword. Often planning regular communications goes by the way side in favor of a spur-of-the-moment, we-need-to-put-something-together-quick approach (common inside many marketing departments). Don't get me wrong, email is beautiful for being the quick-hit tactic that allows you to act in the moment - whether it be a marketplace shift or a change in strategy wakes you up in the middle of the night. But make sure you plan and create a backbone of regularly scheduled e-mailings (newsletters, promotions, announcements, etc.) to keep your brand top-of-mind throughout the year. This is especially helpful if your business model relies on supporting direct sales folks. It also allows you plan better around your other marketing activities (from a budget and staffing perspective).

3. Tell your web designer to stop designing "image-only" emails - Yes they create lovely emails, but in order for you to get a better response, you need your recipients to actually see your content and help improve the ability of these emails to reach their inbox. You need a mix of both text and graphics - period. Why? If your recipient has their reader set so that images are "turned off", your beautiful mailing will look like a blank email (if it even makes it past the spam filter) and will likely end up being quickly deleted. Lesson? They can't act on your offer - if they never see it.

4. Pay attention to bounces - Are you emailing to your customers or prospects? Have an opportunity to reach out to them any other way (mail, phone?). Why not put someone in charge of dialing through the "bounced" email list and let the recipients know that their email address has bounced and perhaps it just needs to be updated. Depending on the economic success of email marketing for your organization, this may be a little time well spent. Most email marketers simply ignore bounced emails. Mine them and perhaps you may find a few diamonds in the rough.

5. Start personalizing - Beyond "Dear Steve", look for opportunities to do some simple personalization. This may be something as simple as recognizing my last purchase (thank you for buying product XYZ) or perhaps recognizing their birthday and offering a special treat to redeem. Keep it simple to start and soon you can leverage the data you acquire to speak 1-to-1 to your database and improve response rates.

6. Sender, Subject Line, Headline, Copy, Offer, Call-to-action - Not too unlike direct mail, make sure your copywriters and designers understand the power - and the unique limitations - of inbox marketing. Imagine designing a print ad knowing folks had to "enable the ad to appear", or a filter dropped the publication in the trash before your subscriber could even look at it. Or even worse, your reader had to "scroll" to view the ad or the offer. Focus on the natural flow of email from a recipients perspective - Who is sending me this (the sender), what’s it about (the subject line - or think of it as the ads headline), what’s in it for me? (Copy/Offer) and is it easy to get to the prize? (is the call-to-action in my face and easy to move on).

7. Pay for professional looking emails - Can you imagine using an "ad template" library to generically drop in your logo, choose from some basic font and “sort-of” branded colors to represent your company? Pay a pro graphics person to design your emails. Once it’s designed, you can then use it as a professionally designed template over and over again.

8. Think outside the newsletter - For some reason, businesses thinking about or experimenting with email marketing, focus too much on a "newsletter". Email is a marvelous communication channel that gives a marketer a slew of promotional and branding opportunities. Rolling out a new product? Want to run a special sales promotion? Looking to educate your clients and prospects? Staging an event and want to get folks to RSVP via email? Want to poll or survey your new customers? Open your mind to all sorts of email marketing approaches to help you build better relationships and increase sales at the register.

9. Use email to get them into the store - If you run a retail location, and you're not collecting email addresses, it's time to get moving. This simple act of building an email marketing database and then delivering simple offers throughout the year can increase the number of visits and ultimately sales like no other medium. (of course - you must get permission to email them!)

10. Make money - This should be the goal right? Even it is just a relationship builder, a supporter of direct sales efforts, or a direct response tool - the bottom line is - can you trace your email marketing activities back to more cash in the register?

11. Don’t email me unless it’s relevant – I have no “free” time either. With that said, I can only pay attention to those things I feel will give me an edge, improve me today, or at some other point in my life. Believe me, I subscribe to a lot of emails. I periodically find myself deleting or unsubscribing from those that just offer me no value anymore. So before your next e-marketing planning session - please ask yourself – if we deliver this message – will our audience care? If the answer is a vague yes or worse – hit the brakes and re-think your email marketing strategy. In 2007, always ask – is this relevant?