By now, you and your team likely have a Marketing Plan devised for 2008. Too often, email is not included as part of this initial plan. Having an email schedule as part of your marketing plan will ensure each email is well thought out and is as effective as possible. If email isn’t yet a part of your marketing plan, read our article on how to simply and easily plan your email schedule for 2008.

Did you miss this article in our latest issue of Factory Direct? Sign up here to get our e-newsletter sent to you each month.

Véro S. Pepperrell over at Digital Web Magazine wrote a great article yesterday dubbed “The 7 Deadly Sins of Email Marketing.” This is a thoughtful, well written, must read article for any email marketer. Read what Véro says about each “sin” in her article, she goes into detail on each point. Good stuff.

Below I have listed out the 7 sins she includes in her article:

1. Failing to test the email design in multiple email clients.
2. Failing to spam check the email copy before sending.
3. Putting hurdles in the way of unsubscribing.
4. Neglecting to maintain the lists invalid email addresses.
5. Becoming complacent.
6. Sending content that isn’t relevant to what the user signed up for.
7. Most importantly, emailing a user without permission.

Great job to Vero for summing up some key “NO’s” in email marketing. Again, I urge you to read the entire article here.

As always, if you would like to discuss any of the “sins” that Véro has mentioned in her article please don’t hesitate to contact your account management team.

If it’s not the most obvious rule with email marketing, then it’s tied for whatever might be #1.

In email marketing, as with any other marketing channel, it’s all about the relationship! If you succeed at building a strong relationship, then you are likely to have a good shot at converting a lead into a customer, and having a customer who sticks around for a long time.

Email offers it’s own unique set of challenges when it comes to building a relationship….but it also offers unique opportunities. When generating leads online, email’s obviously a critical component as it serves as a primary form of communication. But online marketing can be impersonal, and certainly doesn’t give you the opportunity for any face to face communication…at least not initially. So building a strong relationship takes work….

…..now here’s the obvious part!

When you are successful at generating a lead online, and you get someone to ‘raise their hand’ and ask for something to be provided to them (white paper, demo, call, free gift, etc.), or buy something, the first and most important step is to actually communicate with them via email in a meaningful way. It sounds obvious, but too often a company doesn’t even send a response email after someone has signed up for (or purchased) something. And if they do send an initial email, it’s impersonal, generic and cold.

And there goes the perfect opportunity to establish a relationship from the start, and the first impression opportunity is lost. This should be the perfect time to make a good impresssion and begin to build the relationship.

Setting up an initial response email to be automatically delivered is very easy to do, and will provide ongoing, consistent first communication. This is just the beginning of building a strong and meaningful (i.e. worthwhile to the lead or customer) relationship, but something that should never be overlooked….it’s just too easy to do!

There are more and more studies being done to test which day is best to send emails, and a new report this week confirms what we pretty much already knew….it pays to test!

There are a couple of interesting findings in this report….most interesting is the fact that Sunday may actually be a good day to send emails. This is obviously only true for Consumer targeted emails, but in the past Sunday hasn’t been a very good day…so add another day to the testing.

Also noteworthy is the fact that it may pay off to focus on finding an unpopular time to send emails. You may find open rates are lower, but click-thru and conversions might actually be higher since the recipients receive fewer emails….and therefore have more time to read the emails they do receive.

There are many factors that will determine which days are best to send, and it may even be true that different days are good for different types of emails from the same company. The key again is to test, and be flexible…..and don’t stick with what used to work as a rule. Email is still evolving, and is very much in flux, so expect delivery day success to change right along with everything else.

An emerging trend in email marketing will be an even more vertically focused approach. There will always be similarities among industries, but just as more targeted campaigns are having more success than general campaigns, so too will industry specific strategies.

There is understandably a big focus on email marketing strategy around retail, but this is not the only industry that specific strategies can yield better results. And even within the online retail space, specific product/service companies will benefit a great deal from custom strategies.

It’s easy to fall in line and follow suit with what’s most popular, but each industry has it’s own unique customer base, buying habits, consumer issues, etc. which dictate a unique approach.

Our own experience is proving this true. Both our existing and new clients are beginning to look for more effective strategies than in the past. It’s the natural evolution of email marketing…and they are asking for new ways to reach and convert customers, not just the popular methods.

And as with everything online, the key will be in the testing to find out what works best!