Email marketing is just a little click of the mouse; a customer can go from reading your marketing message, to purchasing at your online checkout. This speedy, one-step process is what marketing dreams are made of.

The first thing you need to do is complete a competitive analysis-that is, check out what your competition is up to. This is easy to do: your competitors should be actively building lists of their own, so you should have no trouble subscribing to their campaigns.

If you spot any competitors doing a great job, you might want to order some of their products to gain insight on the kinds of messages they send to their existing customers, as opposed to their prospect list. This information will give you the inside edge on what your email campaign needs to do.

Best Times to Send:

There are certain days of the week and particular times of the day when people are more likely to take the time to read emails. Ongoing industry research suggests that for business communication, Tuesday to Thursday is ideal days, and between 10.00 a.m. and 3.00 p.m. is the ideal time. However, other markets may differ, so ensure that you test different approaches and see if there is a better time. For instance, you might find that if you are promoting a computer gaming product, people will be more receptive to these messages outside work hours-that is when they are more likely to be thinking about leisure activities.

Segmentation: Targeting Your Emails:

As your email list grows, a key to ongoing success is segmenting your lists into specific demographic groups to improve the quality of your conversion. Using what you know about the people on your list, carve it up into smaller batches and run email campaigns directed to them. On your subscription form, you might wish to offer your members the option of HTML or text email, and then ask for a few details about them, such as gender and geographic location.

Sequencing:

Email is often considered to be a one-hit wonder among online marketers. You have an offer, you put in an email, you send it out and then you wait to see how many sales you make. This, however, is a very shortsighted view; email marketing is about a growing, evolving relationship with each customer. That is why limiting your campaign to one email could be restricting your revenue-instead, consider sending a sequence of messages.

Frequency and Scheduling:

When planning your email campaigns you will need to decide what to send out, and how often to send them. This needs to be done at a global level with all your email messages. While you might think of your sales messages as separate to your system generated housekeeping messages, to your customers they are all still notifications from your company. You risk annoying your subscribers if you bombard them with three emails in a day; as opposed to three emails in one month. There is no golden rule on how many is too many, as it can depend on the kind of business you are running. You will need to find the right mix as you gain a better feel for the tendencies of your customer base.