Email marketing

Online newsletters are an effective tool used by a lot of web sites to not only keep them top of mind with their customers — they also encourage repeat visits. This is where visitors to a web site can sign up to receive email news as often as it’s sent out by the web site. The idea behind this is to encourage visitors to read the newsletter and be drawn back to the web site. Used judiciously, this can be a very effective marketing tool.

You should be sure you can get enough people signing up for the newsletter to make it worth your while. Most people tend to shy away from newsletters as they consider them to be junk mail. You don’t want to have to sit down every week or every month to write a newsletter for two people. If you think your newsletter can offer something unique, repeatedly, then there is more chance of your web site visitors signing up for it and more chance that this tactic will work in your favour.

Spam awareness

In order for your email to be successful and not get caught up in recipient's email gateway try and observe the following:

• Always make sure you have an unsubscribe option
• In your message subject line, be as specific as possible, with as many relevant details as you can fit. Spam filters are more inclined to let specific messages through than generic ones. For instance, if you send an email with the subject "Email Alert", it may be picked up by the spam filters and doesn’t encourage it to be opened. It would be better to say "New in October on News Online"
• Always have the full article on your web site and display a teaser with links to the full article instead of trying to include all the content in your email. This make the email shorter, punchier and draws the recipient back to your web site
• Avoid using punctuation symbols - like "" quotation marks, $$$ dollar signs, and !!!! exclamation points
• Avoid one or more lines of large fonts or all caps - YELLING at the recipient
• Avoid at least 70 percent blank lines
• Make sure the message body doesn't claim that it is not spam
• Body should not contain "Dear friend"
• Avoid the use of the words 'click here'
• Use stylesheets, do not put in your own fonts unless absolutely necessary
• Do use an all-white background instead of a coloured one, this makes it easier to read
• Don’t use a lot of different coloured fonts
• Don’t include .exe or attachments with your message, this will surely get blocked by the email filters
• Don’t use BCC distribution methods with more than 10 names per email

The following words, in both your email subject headlines and in the body of the email are known to trigger spam filters:

Free - alone or in combinations, for example: 'free dinner with test drive' FREE - in all caps Guarantee, GUARANTEED Cash Money back Savings Call now $$$$ !!! Hello Discount! You're a winner! What are you waiting for? While supplies last Click here, click below Million dollars Don’t miss this 50% off! Subscribe Hidden Opportunity Compare

Remove Collect Amazing Cash bonus Credit Loans Act now! All new Buy direct Special promotion Easy terms Great offer Give it away, giving it away No cost, No fees Offer One time Please read Don't delete Save up to Time limited Visit our web site While supplies last Why pay more? You've been selected

And most importantly, look at the results you are getting from your campaigns. If you only get 5 people opening your emails when you send out 500, something is wrong and you should rethink your subject line and content. Don’t do things the same way just because you have always done it that way. Think about how to impact the people you are sending your email to, and keep improving the content and wording.

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