There are a variety of factors that will weigh on the success or failure of any email marketing effort. The key is to do the right things to turn these factors in your favor.

1. Your Email List
The quality of your email list is directly related to the email marketing results you’ll achieve. You need to make sure that the list stays current and is a completely opt-in list. The email you send should be related to the products and services in which these people have previously shown an interest. If you don’t create the list yourself, you need to be very certain of the quality and opt-in nature of its origin.

2. Email Subject Lines
The first two things people typically see when they receive email are the sender and subject. If the subject doesn’t sound interesting or if it sounds like yet another sales pitch, you can be sure that the bulk of your intended readers will never open it. It should go without saying that your email marketing results will be poor, if most of these people don’t read the email you send.

3. Sender Name
Likewise, the sender needs to be something people recognize. If they don’t immediately know who you are by your sender address or title, they’ll likely never open your email.

4. Track Results
You need to have some sort of tracking mechanism in place where you can track the success of each campaign. This will allow you to continually improve your results over time.

5. Include Opt-Out Link
Those receiving your email have a legal right to opt-out, so make sure you always include some type of unsubscribe link. Further, it does you no good to continue to send email to those who don’t want it and will only serve to get you on email blacklists.

6. Test Integrity
If you send anything other than plain text email, you need to ensure that none of the image links are broken and that all of the image links have alt tags in place. A failure to include these things will make email hard to read and make you appear unprofessional.

7. Remain Disciplined
All of the above steps require an effort on your part. Some may seem trivial, but a failure to follow them will typically result in a failed email marketing campaign. Be sure you keep track of how every campaign does and try to isolate those things that work and those things that don’t work. The more logs and records you keep of what you’ve sent the better tools you’ll have to analyze these results and formulate ever more successful email marketing campaigns over time.

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