10 Tips for Better Email Marketing in 2009

If you’re an email marketer, Stefan Pollard at Clickz posted YOUR New Years resolutions in his post, Ten Resolutions to Make 2009 a Better Email Year.

Here’s a quick overview of his 10 tips, but check out the original article if you want full details.

1. I Will Listen to Feedback - Feedback helps build better programs. When you understand what your audience wants, and what they don’t, you can deliver on those items.

• Sign up for all ISP feedback-loop sources.
• Monitor replies to inboxes, even those you tell readers not to e-mail.
• Solicit and read reader comments.
• Send surveys for direct comments on specific topics.

2. I Will Give My Subscribers More Control Over What They Receive

• Provide meaningful choices during the subscription process (avoid all conjunctions).
• Use a preference center to make personalization or customization easier.
• Collect only data you need to complete the process at opt-in.

3. I Will Monitor More Than Open/Click-Through Rates/Revenue - Track unsubscribes, bounces, and spam complaints as well as open and click rates.

4. I Will Practice More Segmentation for Increased Relevance- Set aside one day a month as “segmentation day,” where your goal is to “do incrementally better e-mail.” For example, identify a subset of your list and tell an incrementally better story to it. You shouldn’t need complex data integrations.

5. I Will Practice Good List Hygiene and Trim Inactives - Optimize your sign-up process to collect more accurate data.

6. I Will Pay Attention to the ISPs - Visit ISP postmaster sites regularly to learn about changes that affect delivery and get information to make you a better e-mail marketer.

7. I Will Work to Send Great Content - Not “great” as in “exciting,” although that would be nice. Instead, write content that works: no broken links, correct spelling, punctuation, and word use and images used properly.

8. I Will Make it Easy for Recipients to Know Who I Am - You want recipients to recognize you immediately in the inbox.

9. I Will Be More Careful About Whose E-mail Efforts I Emulate We assume that companies with top brands, or brands we admire, also do e-mail marketing right. So, we copy what they do, but Hhnestly, most of them aren’t doing great e-mail, either.

10. I Will Banish the Word “Blast” From my Vocabulary