1. Only email people who want to receive your emails.
The assumption that the more people you email, the more sales you will generate is wrong. You should only ever email people who want to receive your email. Sending emails to people who dont want to receive your communications will cause spam complaints. Spam complains lower your sender reputation causing future campaigns to be rejected or slip into spam filters.

2. Keep your message fresh.
Don’t be a lazy marketeer! If you are sending the exact same email every month to your subscriber base, you will not boost sales – but you will do a great job at increasing unsubscribes and annoying customers. Keep varying your marketing message, you should never send the same campaign message twice.

3. De-dupe your database.
Always run the List Doctor automatic de-dupe on your database before sending. A subscriber that exists inside your database 50 times will probably get quite annoyed if you email them 50 times! You can de-dupe your database with once click inside your EB account – it is always worth checking for duplicates before a send.

4. Purchased lists generate complaints, not sales.
More and more ‘businesses’ are cropping up trying to sell email marketing databases. List sellers hardly ever tell you how each user in their data base opted in to receive emails, generally because they never did in the first place. Sending an unsolicited email will generate complaints and damage the reputation of your company. Purchased lists hardly ever generate sales. Nothing can beat a COI list which is self generated.

5. Keep it regular.
You may run a weekly or monthly email marketing newsletter. Ensure that you keep your broadcasts regular. If you stop sending for a few weeks or months, your subscriber base will more than likely forget who you are – loosing any previously established trust and brand loyalty. If you know that you are going to be busy for the next few weeks and may not have time to broadcast your newsletter, use the EB scheduling system to setup timed broadcasts for a future date/time.

6. Timing is key.
Give some thought to the time when your email newsletter will hit your clients inbox’s. Typically running a broadcast at 5pm on a friday afternoon will generate little interest. When would would your customer base most like to receive your email?

7. Include more than just a sales message.
The most successful email marketing campaigns include relevant and useful information. Have you considered providing a monthly top tip related to your industry area? Hitting people with just a sales message month in month out will quickly generate high levels of complaints and unsubscribes. Your email newsletter should be used as a platform to inform – not just sell.

8. Bombarding Recipients With Email.
Avoid bombarding your client with emails, sending your message every few days to the same client base will generate high levels of unsubscribes and annoy your customers. A bi-monthly or monthly newsletter generally works well.

9. Always provide a real email address to reply to.
This seems a little obvious, but is often overlooked. Lots of marketeers set their reply to address as a unmonitored email address i.e. no-reply@ marketing@. To give your marketing are more personal touch, set your reply to address to a real named contact in your company. After-all, you will not make any sales if the recipient can’t contact you for further information.

10. Test your layout before sending.
If you are a web developer, before making your website live you will bug test it in different browsers. Email newsletters are exactly the same. Different email readers may render your code differently. A little annoying, but like a website its always important to bug test before going live.