Looking to market your website and business via email? Here’s a quick overview of where to focus your limited resources—and some common mistakes to avoid.

1. 

   Don’t send your email from a desktop client (e.g. Outlook).
   Sending mass-email from Outlook, Entourage, Thunderbird, etc. forces you to either:

   1. put recipients in the “bcc” field, which ensures your
      message will meet a quick and painless death at the
      hands of most SPAM (unsolicited bulk email) filters, or
   2. put recipients in the “to” or “cc” fields, which may lead
      to a slow and painful death for YOU at the hands of your
      recipients

   Important note: If you don’t know why option b is a problem, seek professional help immediately!

2. Make it incredibly brainlessly/joyfully easy to opt out of receiving any future emails.
   If you don’t allow folks to remove themselves from your email messaging, you’re acting just like the weird guy at the reunion with the comb-over and the pelvic-thrust hug that refuses to take the hint: the conversation is over.
   Important Note: Refusing to take the hint is bad brand management.
3. Test before you send.
   Receiving an email full of typos, broken links, or strange formatting from an organization that purports to be professional is a serious turnoff. While you won’t always be able to optimize your formatting for every email program, you can at least make sure your text is clean and your links all work.
4. Optimize your “Subject” line.
   Most mass-emails never get opened. Other than the “From” field, the subject line is the only other information that recipients have to determine why they shouldn’t trash your message. Put important info into the first few characters. Keep it real.
   Important Note: Avoid Exclamation Points!!!!!!!!
5. 

   Optimize your “From” name.

   In the Inbox, your message will appear next to messages from family, friends, and colleagues (assuming it makes it through the SPAM filter). Depending on the circumstances, your “from” name should be a person, the name of your business, or in some cases the name of a department plus your company name.

6. Have reverse DNS records in place for your sending software IP address.
   Many SPAM firewalls these days won’t accept mail from an IP address that does not have reverse DNS entries (preferably with the same domain as the sending domain—though this is not required). Make sure your hosting provider or registrar has this important record in place.
   Important Note: If your hosting provider doesn’t know what reverse DNS is, find a new hosting provider.
7. Allow website-based subscription management.
   If folks want to unsubscribe, let them go. If they want to join, by all means, let them. If they just want to change their email address, you’re a fool not to let them do it easily.
8. Write small, easily scanned, easily digested bits of content, and link to the “full story” on the website.

   In an email message, short, sweet snippets are more likely to be read than flowing prose. By sending folks back to the website, you gain the critically-important advantage of measurement. You’ll know which articles/items in your email polled well and which ones bombed—and you can then adjust the next email accordingly.

9. Send your email messages in Multipart.
   This allows your message to be read as text-only OR complete with pretty pictures and formatting. Sending your messages in multipart could be the difference between a business-sustaining and a business-killing response rate from your email campaign.
10. 

    Avoid looking or sounding like SPAM at all costs.

    Roughly 95% of the world’s email is SPAM. Whole industries have come into being with the sole mission of identifying and killing SPAM. This makes the world a very dangerous place for your message.

    Give your message as much help as it can get.

Derek Olson - Vice President — For the past 10 years, Derek has been providing strategic advice to clients large and small—across a wide spectrum of industries and non-profit sectors. Derek is most passionate about the symbiotic relationship he observes between web usability, semantic markup, and marketing. He can often be cajoled into speaking at length on these matters.