Guidelines for Email Marketing

Online marketing represents the forms of marketing which occur on the internet and which can include email, online advertising, creating consumer products; lead generation and subscriber services, as well as selling on the internet. Online marketing includes a wide variety of tactics and strategies, including search engine optimization, email marketing, and interactive digital marketing whereby companies use different forms of internet technology to advertise and market their products. Search engine optimization is the process of creating websites which achieve high rankings in the search engines and also drives traffic to the website, while email marketing is about incorporating an email marketing campaign and providing an opportunity for people to subscribe to an email mailing list where products and services are offered. Affiliate marketing is sometimes also referred to as associate marketing or partner marketing, where businesses incentivize people to promote their products using the affiliate marketing network, by providing a commission on any sales that result from the referral. You can also sign up as an affiliate to an affiliate program and promote products or services via email or a website.

Email marketing is a great way to promote a business and make it easier for people to respond. Of course, use of email is still one of the most effective online retail marketing methods. If done correctly, email marketing can maximize lead generation and sales by following a few simple guidelines.

• Conduct market research. Look at your niche market and think about what you need to do differently to make your product or service stand out from the crowd. Design your business so that it benefits your customers in every way possible, including making your product more affordable. Doing some market research will tell you exactly what people are looking for and what they need to succeed in your market.
• Establish email contact by age, gender and interests to better target your audience. That way, your emails will come out better targeted to who you are wanting to reach.
• Personalize your everyday emails, especially when you send broadcasts. Your recipients will appreciate your personal touch and how you treat each one of them.
• Make sure you include a link to your website's home page in every email so that recipients will easily get back to your site.
• Don't make your business sound like a spam. Never mass send your marketing product, rather send emails based on your personalized database.
• Evaluate the content of each of your marketing emails. You need to develop a formal "sales pitch" that makes sure your email gets noticed and clicked on.
• Set up an internal system for tracking email open and click-through rate.
• Remember to include language that includes the "Click Here" word in your email.
• Keep your e-mails at a minimum of 1,000 words.
• Keep your emails short and to the point.
• Test your emails on different email servers. Test how your emails appear on different readers with different email software.
• You should only send your emails once every two weeks. You don't want your customers to forget about you. 
• Do not leave your website or your product out of any of your marketing emails. Especially if you have newsletters, clean, up-to-date information is a popular way for customers to subscribe.
• Be careful with subject lines - maintain different subject lines in your campaign, depending on how many emails you send out.
• Make sure that you keep your emails in HTML format.
• Always test your newsletters with varied email software before sending them to your entire mailing list.
• Do not use all caps or exclamation marks because it is an unnecessary distraction that will make your email look like spam.