After all this time and all this spam, it might be surprising that email is still the best marketing route. The trick is making sure your intended recipients know you’re not spam, thereby welcoming you into their inboxes.

Recently reports have shown that not only does email produce better return-on-investment than other forms of communication like search ads and display ads, but email may also be your best bet during the (apparent) recession on the horizon.

Not only is the ROI better, but the cost is lower and just about everybody, regardless of Internet speed, computer capabilities, or installed software, has the required technology to view email.

So, if you decide that email deserves a renewed focus, or are looking for ways to improve your current email campaign, here are a few pointers for improving your open-rate.

Employ your newsletter as an extension of your website

Promote the content on your website via an email newsletter. Highlight important, interesting, or news-breaking articles of the past week (or however often you send). Make sure link to website as often as possible (or justified), using deep links, not just to the front page. Highlight five or ten articles or posts with a paragraph synopsis of each one, and link to the article.

Content + relevant advertising is a good thing

If you include ads in your newsletter, try to ensure that the ads are related to the content. People interested in your content, are likely interested in related advertising.

Here’s another hint: newspapers often charge extra to have an ad placed near an article about the advertiser or the industry in which they are a part.

Important: Don’t forget to link

Make it easy for your recipients to find your site. Some newsletters go out without a single hyperlink to their site or sources they’re writing about. Think of your end-user and how they’d like to be treated. Nobody wants to have to search for something when they all they should have to do is click.

Compel them in your subject line

Your subject line should be short, pithy and clear, not long, boring, and obtuse. A: longer subject lines will be ignored, not scanned all the way. B: Nobody will open an email if they don’t understand the subject. Keep it to 70 characters or less, grab them, tell them what the story’s about. Just because you think the headline’s cute or clever, it doesn’t mean the audience has the right frame of reference to get it, so be clear.

Remind them who you are

Branding is a fairly simple concept: it’s all about repetition. If your brand, publication name, or company name isn’t what shows up as the sender in the inbox, make sure it is included in the subject line, and make sure it’s in a couple of places on the email itself.

Don’t try to impress with language

English class, fine literature, and certain world-class publications require you to use lofty language. If you’re mass-marketing, the masses ain’t gonna get it. Stay away, unless you know you’re audience is highbrow, from $5 words. Look in the 50-cent plastic-bubble prize machine for the vocabulary you use and you’ll get along better.

Offer as many ways to access your content as possible

Offer an RSS feed, links to your site, podcasts and video if you have the capability, and whatever else you can think of to help people access your content more often and more conveniently.

By Jason Lee Miller

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