Don't Spin Out of Control

"When I take my weekly spin class at the local gym," says Louis Chatoff, "the instructor is constantly reminding the class to breathe." In an amusing report, he draws a parallel between spinners and email marketers: "So often we go as fast as we can with all our effort towards rapid short-term gains, when we should relax, stay focused, and breathe." He offers a few tips for a sound email marketing regimen:

Warm-Up: Verify the integrity of your list. No email marketing campaign should be attempted without list verification, Chatoff insists. For instance, "Did you set subscriber expectations during the opt-in process—such as the type and frequency of your mailings?"

Work-Out: Write targeted copy, and send it to a targeted audience. Targeting takes a peak effort, but it gets results. Tech tip: "Add a short text piece for … recipients [with hand-held devices] who tend to weed through messages."

Cool-Down: Analyze your delivery reports. Both hard and soft bounces could relate to ISP delivery issues. And a falling open rate could mean an ISP is filtering your message before it even gets to the mail server.

Throughout it all: don't forget to breathe. "Take the time to research best practices so you are constantly building a positive reputation with your recipients and ISPs," Chatoff concludes.

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