Email Marketing has become somewhat of a tricky matter. It is powerful, but easily abused, and this had made the task of delivering your message that much more difficult as email becomes more abused and people desensitizes to the medium.

Consequently smart marketers know that email marketing is no longer a case of shooting in any direction and hoping for the best. Here are some great ideas for making your message stand out from the crowd.

• Use your company or brand name in the “from” line, which tells recipients who sent the email.
• Write a brief subject line that accurately represents the message's major content.
• Keep HTML-format messages as simple as possible. The more items you pack into an HTML message (images, graphics, sound or video) — the more likely something won’t work on your recipients’ computers.
• In HTML messages, use alt tags and support text around images so that readers whose email clients block images by default will still get the gist of your message. Many email clients will also block alt tags, so good use of text is key.
• If you offer a text version, make sure the content includes links to all of your core functions and tasks. Don’t force readers to click to the Web version of your newsletter to receive its benefits or manage their subscriptions.
• Load up on relevant links. If your goal is to funnel readers to your Web site, give them many access points, such as two or three order buttons sprinkled around a promo message instead of just one, or links to related information on your website.
• Lose the generic action button. Instead of “click here,” use descriptive terms such as “Order now!” or “subscribe me!” Be explicit about the actions you want users to take.
• Test each email message before you send it, in different browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, etc.), email clients (Outlook, Lotus Notes, Gmail, Yahoo!) and platforms (Macintosh and PC). Click each link; watch out for oddities and inconsistencies in the way images load (or don’t load) and in text fonts and widths.
• Adhere to your users’ preferences for frequency, format and content. If you keep sending promo offers to people who signed up just for the newsletter, you’ll lose them.
• Help readers manage your information. Include a forward-to-a-friend link in messages where appropriate and a print option that links to a printer-friendly version of an HTML message. Label those functions, either with icons or brief text.

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