Schewanick Computer Services

Email get a lot of attention in online marketing circles. It's an easy, cheap way to keep existing clients and prospects informed about your business relationships and informed of special offers.

The challenges with email are increasing daily. With more stringent guidelines from ISPs and less trust in email purveyors in generalfrom subscribers the deliverability environment is not a smooth one in any sense of the word. There are several simple steps anyone interested in email marketing can take to improve the effectiveness of campaigns and in turn the conversions to the benefit of their businesses bottom line.

1) Clean HTML: If you send HTML emails it is essential that the coding you use to develop your email is clean and in line with standards set forth by W3C and others. Broken links, open tables (just to name a few) set off ISP triggers, which means that your email will be delivered, but not to the inbox - most often to the junk email folder where it will never be read by your subscriber. If you are not confident in your ability to create HTML email which combine graphics and elements that will not trigger ISP's to block or send your email to the junk email folder consider using text based message. While certainly not as attractive, many email marketers have claimed they see better results with non-formatted emails.

2) Send Email Regularly: While a challenging undertaking, sending email (whether it is advertising emails or weekly newsletters) it is important, if not essential, that you send them regularly. The reason is because ISP monitor the flow of email from IP addresses and dislike when there are sporadic influxes in emails without a regular pattern. If an ISP knows you are a regular sender of email it is less likely to blacklist your IP address.

3) Build Trust With Subscribers: Consumers are distrusting of most online companies. The reason is not that we as humans are distrustful creatures, but that we as business owners do not give them reason to trust us in the first place. Successful email marketers (not spammers) utilize a very simple strategy to help them build trust with potential subscribers - they tell future readers what they are going to receive, how often they are going to receive it and why they are trustworthy enough to handle their personal information - primarily the email address. If you are keen on building trust with your consumers, consider a seal of approval for your website that is offered by an independent third party - such as TrustE or ValidatedSite.com.

There is a lot of work that goes into improving email campaign conversions. Ensuring you have clean HTML that will not trigger ISP SPAM filters, sending email regularly and building trust with email subscribers are just a few to remember.

About the author:

Pete Prestipino is an online marketing consultant for ValidatedSite.com.