Before proceeding further, I have to state that this shall serve purely as a non-exhaustive guide. All information provided in this guide are a compilation of my research and personal experience with the subject. There is no guarantee, whether stated or implied, that will propel it your sales and marketing efforts to greater heights.

As there are many aspects to look into, I guess I shall go easy first .. by touching on some fundamentals principles of good e-marketing practices

A good e-mail marketing campaign should fulfill the following criteria::

Opt-in Based
In fact the implementation of Email Marketing should be targeted towards a group of people who have given you the permission to send the information that they have specified.

It must be noted that this permission is not be abused, ie sending irrelevant materials or selling their personal particulars to 3rd parties

Add-value to recipient
The information must add value to the recipient.

For example, if you are doing a health-related e-newsletter, do not just send them advertisements of health products that you are distributing. You may do so subtly after providing some health tips, like how Vitamin C is beneficial for them, and then introduce them your products. BUT, never .. never .. make it an outright advertisement. Your members will soon be unsubscribing from your list.

REMEMBER :: People love to buy .. they don't like to be sold!!

This brings me to the next criterion

Unsubscribe method
3 Reasons for this.

1)It will soon be illegal when the can-spam act is passed. One of the requirement is for an unsubscribe option.
2)It is waste of your resources to send materials to these people as they are probably going to ignore or block your mails
3)It PISSES them off, and this will in turn becomes negative publicity for you.

Reasonable Frequency
Too much too soon and you’ll frighten away even the most enthusiastic propect.
Too little too late and they would have forgotten who on earth you are.

Generally, 1-2 times a week should be taken as the max. In fact, to do 1-2 quality e-newsletters a week is already a rather taxing job.

There are still some exceptions to this. For example, in my previous company, an online stocks trading company. We send out a daily email to our clients with the latest summary of the market updates. This is very well received.

Personal Touch
Please remember, not many people like reading a technical paper! Set your tone in a conversational manner.

“Customise” your email as far as possible. There are countless such software out there that can do this .. and many are free ( with a little restricitons). It'll do something like a "Mail-Merge" function like that of a word processor. Therefore, each receipient will recieve a personalised greeting and maybe even a personlised attachment.

So, unless the recipient's name is "Sir" or "Madam", and greeting like "Hi Pete" definitely sounds a lot more engaging then "Hi Sir or Madam" .. and I could bet my head that ain't anyone on this earth with ::

Firstname :: Sir
Middlename :: Or
Lastname :: Madam



Aesthetics

A HTML-format email will definitely be more attractive and enjoyable to read. It will open up a window of opportunities for creativity and interactivity.

But .. ..

WARNING

Not all email clients support HTML format. Even if it does, some settings may inhibit it's ability to display HTML.

Thus, make sure that you choose a software that will support multi-part format. That is it will send out the email and, depending on the programme on recieving-end, disply the email in the right format.

Note that this is tricky. Very tricky. I've tested on many software and sometimes the recipient will send reply me with an email full of gibberish .. and on the top of the mail it will say .. "Try reading this YOURSELF!!!"

.. with this I'll end this lil article .. pls give your comments .. I can take critical remarks .. but try to be contructive when criticising .. there is really a lot more I wanna say but I am still in the midst of laying things straight. .. please feel free to ask me questions .. I think that will be easier for me to share my knowledge ..

Nice Tutorial for Email marketting. Where did you research all this ?

Thanks for your compliment .. Well a hell lot of places actually .. mostly be companies that are promoting their Mass Mailing Software .. also I've a good friend who used to work for a multi-national Email outsourcing company.

We were trying to start up some e-marketing business but unfortunately did not quite worked out .. Learnt a lot during that period.. ..

Some exploration also helped .. well .. in fact will be doing some project for my company's next marketing .. will use it as another experiment ..

The golden standard regarded by the email marketing industry is that of a double-optin list, in which the user must "opt-in" twice before he/she gets on the mailing list. He/she has to provide an email and click on a link in the verification email sent to confirm his/her subscription. this virtually eliminates the risk of being labelled a spammer for the email marketer.

Hi

I've been looking out for a piece of desktop software (preferably open-source - windows based) that will allow me to send out a customized (mail merge function) HTML newsletter to a group list of about 4000 subscribers. The thing is that this is not revenue based and I'm not willing to spend any money on a high end software. Problem with this approach is that most bulk email software have a whole lot of restrictions.

Since I've spent a good 4 days looking and trying out at least 20 odd programs - I'd be grateful if anyone will be able to point me to software that will sort me out.

Thanks

I just wanted to point out that I, for one, absolutely detest this practice. Perhaps it is my age or southern U.S upbringing showing but I get a bit offended when some one or something especially (like a mail bot) assumes familiarity as if we are on a first name basis, or worse shortening my name. This will always turn me away.

What's my point? The first rule in any marketing or advertising is to know the intended audience. Thus if you are marketing skateboards a first name basis is going to be more effective. However, if you are marketing to an investments mailing list I would suggest a more formal approach.

Double opt ins are certainly preferable and EASY opt outs. All in all a good post Arkad.