Top Email Best Practices

1. Write a good subject line. Because you only have a short time to catch your reader's attention, it is important that you think about your subject line. Let your audience be the judge--conduct subject line testing with a small sample of your list--the winner can be the subject line for the rest of your list.
2. Don't bury the call the action. The call to action should be upfront and in the reader's face! Make sure it is all throughout your email, so that readers are able to access it in more than one place.
3. Write for an external audience, rather than an internal one. Make sure you answer the "so what?" question. The content of your email should explicitly state what the customer will receive if they act on your email.
4. Learn from your own success. Be sure to check the metrics and learn from past email campaigns. Look at the open rates and the click-throughs and where you placed them. This shows that you may need to place your links from now on.
5. Don't ever copy from Word or other Microsoft Office programs. These programs drag code along with them, which may hurt your ability to send the email without it being deemed as "spam." Be sure to copy your text into Notepad, then use your ESP's WYSIWYG editor to create your copy. If you don't have an Email Service Provider, you can use your HTML editor like Dreamweaver or Frontpage to help you.