How relevant is your email newsletter? Do you find yourself simply tossing stuff out there in order to fill up your email? If so, it may be time to start thinking about your email newsletter a bit more. It is, after all, a representation of you and your business, so you want to make a good impression and make sure that it´s relevant to your subscribers.

Watch the fluff. Relevant, useful content is key to keeping subscribers, so try to stay away from lots of little images and animations just to fill the email newsletter up. It isn´t necessary and people prefer to read a shorter email than to wait for half an hour for your images to load.

Make it printer friendly. Encourage people to print out your email newsletter by including a link to a printer friendly page that includes the same content. Then make sure to offer content that is worth printing!

Subtitles and bullet points. The truth is, most people won´t read your email newsletter from top to bottom, they will skim it to see if there is anything useful to them. Using bullet points and subtitles to highlight the important phrases is vital to catch their attention.

Avoid using just images in your email newsletter. These often are blocked by email servers, so make sure to include alt tags and at least a line or two of text to let the reader know whether or not they want to enable images.

Keeping your email newsletter useful and relevant to your subscribers is the best way to keep them opening and reading your emails. You´ll profit a lot more in the long run if your subscribers do, too.

Adding value to your email marketing campaign is the best way to get more subscribers. One major reason people sign up for email newsletters is for the information, but there is another method to get them signed up for your opt-in list. Email marketing via email courses can be a very effective way to grow your list.

Ecourses have long been a method of email marketing because they are relatively little work when compared to email newsletters and can be used over and over again as long as the topics are relevant. Affiliate or business links can easily be incorporated into the content and you will find that many people are more willing to sign up for 7 lessons on how to build an investment portfolio (or whatever your specialty is) than for a newsletter. Of course, once they are on your list, you can continue to send them updates and offers.

Creating an email course is really not that difficult. Simply select a subject that you wish to teach and break it down into a handful of lessons. Between 7 and 12 lessons is ideal. Fewer than that and you won´t make a lasting impression, but if you have too many lessons, people may feel intimidated and not sign up. However, there are email marketers that have had great success with offering a one month to success program with daily lessons, so it really depends on your topic.

Once you have your lessons written, set them up on your autoresponder, complete with any links you want to include and start promoting. For ultimate email marketing, try promoting the course alongside your email newsletter.

Have you ever considered using your readers as email content? Using something that someone has emailed you kills two birds with one stone. One, you get email content that is quick and easy to implement and two, you build rapport with your readers by paying attention to them.

Positive Emails
Positive email marketing letters are the easiest to use. When someone writes you asking for advice or offering ideas, this is quite simple to incorporate into your newsletter as email content. If you receive a lot of questions, it´s a great idea to have a weekly Q and A, or include this as a section in your email newsletter.

Negative Emails
When someone writes to criticize your email content, it is pretty tempting to simply delete the note, but that would be a mistake. First, evaluate it to see if they might be right. If they are, consider acknowledging that in your email content. Or, if they aren´t, you may want to write a refute. Just be careful not to get into a flaming war, stay civil!

Tips for Using Readers as Email Content
It is usually considered good form to ask a reader if you can use his or her words in your email content. Most people will say yes. Some email marketers don´t bother asking if the reader was rude or offensive, but that is your call. Getting permission ahead of time is the best way to prevent problems later on. You may also include a link to the person´s website.

Email content can be more interesting if you use what your readers have to say. They will feel more connected to you, as well.

The email marketing relationship is much like a real life one between a two people. You could even consider each email newsletter as a date. Now, the question is . . . . are you boring your email marketing date?

In real life, we strive to impress the people we like and that we want to spend more time with. We give them little gifts, listen to what they have to say and offer them a helping hand when they need it. Email marketing works the same way.

If you want to continue the relationship with your subscribers, you need to put some effort into it. You can´t send you email newsletter out whenever you feel like it, that´s like showing up for a date whenever you feel like it . . . you can bet the girl or guy waiting for you won´t stick around for long! Offering little gifts (free ecourses, ebooks, etc.) is another way to show your appreciation for your subscribers and create a stronger email marketing relationship.

Build your relationship with your readers as carefully as you would a person you wanted to have a relationship with in real life. It´s the best way to make your email marketing venture a success.

Did you realize that about 10% of subscribers don´t even get your email newsletters? If you have a list of 10,000 subscribers that is a whole 1,000 that aren´t reading your messages. So, why isn´t the email newsletter getting delivered?

Bounces
A bounced email letter is basically one that never reached its destination. These often come back to you with a message that says something like “failure notice” or “unable to deliver”. If you are using an autoresponder, you may not realize how many bounces you are getting.

A bounced email newsletter could be due to a non-existing email address (the subscriber either gave you a false address or made a mistake typing his in) or it could be a technical issue. If the email client is offline for an hour while you are sending out email newsletters, the email will be bounced. It´s good to have an autoresponder that will automatically clean hard bounces (those with non-existent emails) and resend with others.

Spam Filters
Spam filters are a huge problem for email newsletters. Even if you try to do everything to make sure that your email newsletter is not spam, it could still be labeled as such by accident. This can be fixed, though. When anyone subscribes to your email, your thank you page should contain information on how to whitelist your email. That simply means that the subscriber should add you to their email list so your emails will automatically enter their inbox.

Email newsletters are a great way to communicate with your subscribers, but if they aren´t getting through, neither is your message. Make sure your autoresponder is one that can handle bounced emails and let people know to whitelist your address to ensure that as many emails as possible get through.

Is your email marketing based on a time frame that works for your subscribers? If not, you might want to think about when you send out your email marketing newsletters.

Each target market has an ideal time to be reached, when they are less likely to press the delete button or have someone else do it for them. The trick is knowing when that is so you can schedule your emails to go out then, which will improve open and click rates.

Not sure when your target market is available? There are some guidelines to go by:

Work at home/stay at home moms: Early in the morning, before kids are up or around noon.

IT professionals: Around 8-11 p.m. and 5-7 a.m, that´s when they are most active in email.

CEOs: Weekends and holidays are when these people tend to check their own emails, rather than have an assistant do it for them.

You might also do a survey or test different times. Another way to find out when your target market is online is to check your website stats. Chances are you will see some spikes at the times when your readers are checking out your website. These are often the best email times, as well.

Email newsletters are a lot of work. You have to come up with consistently good email content on a regular basis, frequently clean your list of bounced addresses and promote your opt-in list to grow it. Email marketing is definitely not for the lazy! Unless you outsource.

Outsourcing your email newsletters allows you to focus entirely on promotion and expanding your websites or blogs. The best part is that the content in your outsourced email newsletters is often better than you could write yourself.

Simple Email Newsletter Outsourcing
If you don´t want to give up much control, but simply can´t manage to keep up with all that content yourself, you might want to hire out just the email content. Get a freelance writer to give you enough articles on topics and keywords that you specify for a month or two of email newsletters.

Complete Email Newsletter Outsourcing
For those email marketers who would really rather not have much to do with their email newsletter, but understand that it is an excellent way to build a rapport with their clients, going with a company like Brick Marketing is the answer. You can completely outsource your email newsletters and not have to worry about them at all. Content, emailing, list cleaning, it´s all taken care of for you, while you are concentrating on other things.

Running email newsletters can actually be quite easy if you outsource part or all of the hard work. It´s something to consider if you find yourself spending too much time working on email newsletters instead of your business.

Giveaways are a great opt-in technique for growing your list drastically in a very short amount of time. If you haven’t tried a giveaway yet, it is well worth your time to find one and get into it.

What is a Giveaway?
This opt-in technique is one that has been around for quite some time. Basically, a large number of internet marketers get together and each one provides a free product. Visitors can download as many free products as they like, but they have to sign up for each marketer’s opt-in list before they will receive the chosen goodie. Most people are so enthralled with getting something for free that they are more than happy to hand over their email address.

How to Get Started
First of all, you will need a product. It is best if you have a new product, one you’ve developed yourself. This can be anything that is instantly available via download or online, instructional videos, ebooks and reports, audio files, etc. Though you can use PLR products, this opt-in technique works best if you have something that is brand new to the market.

You will also need to set up an opt-in page, especially for the giveaway, with an autoresponder form. Your autoresponder will also need to be set up to deliver the product or link once the subscriber has confirmed that they wish to be on the list.

There are giveaways going on constantly, but there are even more right now, close to Christmas. Simply do a Google search for JV giveaways and you will find quite a few. Sign up for one or two at first to get the hang of things and don’t be surprised if this opt-in technique nets you a good 3-10,000 new subscribers!

List rental is something that many email marketers turn to when they find their organically grown email lists just aren´t growing fast enough. If you get the right list rental company with the right rental lists available, you can really boost your email marketing venture. However, if you end up with the wrong list, you could be getting nasty emails and be reported for sending out spam.

So, where do you go to find a trustworthy list rental service? There are plenty of services out there, but here are a few points to keep in mind when choosing a list rental site:

• Look for a site that has been in business for a while.

• The list rental business should have referrals and happy customers, look for testimonials on their website.

• Often, the best list rental sites will offer more than just lists. You will find that they operate on all levels of email marketing and have a good understanding of email marketing.

List rental can be an excellent boost for your business and it is well worth finding a trustworthy list rental service that you will come back to over and over again. Just keep the points above in mind when looking for a service and you should be able to rent a list that is definitely safe.

What is your signature line for your email newsletter? If you simply have your name and a link to your website, you are not taking full advantage of the fact that your reader has read this far! The content of your email newsletter is important, but it is also important that you give people something to do when they finish reading your email.

Studies for years have shown that people tend to respond better when told what to do. So, rather than just adding your link under your name and hoping someone will click on it, tell them to do it. Something as simple as “Click below to get more free information” can be all some subscribers need to head over to your website.

Your signature line can include more than one link, but don´t go hog wild like some internet marketers and put a couple dozen links to affiliate sites at the end of your email newsletter. This is most likely just going to be confusing to the reader and you are far better off spreading the links out over several different email newsletters. .

Whenever you have a sale or a special offer going on, make sure you add that or replace your signature with the new link and don´t forget to describe the deal so people know why they should click on this particular link. Remember, if you don´t tell them what to do, it´s quite likely they will simply delete your email newsletter and go about their lives. So, if your email newsletter signature line isn´t what it should be, take a few minutes today to fix it. You´ll be happy with the results.

Coming up with new and fresh content can really be a challenge, but it doesn´t have to be impossible. Here are five great ideas to spark that inspiration when you find yourself struggling to come up with something.

1. Start with a quote that sums up your business or motto in life and then expand on it. You can get a great article out of this and it is pretty easy to find quotes online.

2. Examine a mistake you have made. Everyone makes mistakes when they are building their business, use yours as email content! Write what you did and how you would do things differently now that you know better. Give your readers a chance to learn from your mistakes.

3. Write a review. This could be of anything that relates to your audience. For example, if you write an email newsletter about fish breeding, reviewing a new type of air filter could make for some great email content.

4. Compile a list of resources for your readers. This doesn´t even have to take long, just do a few searches on Google and you should have more than enough email content that will prove useful to your subscribers.

5. Rewrite an old article. If you have been writing email content for more than a few months, you probably have some archives. Dig out a very old article, rewrite it and polish it. Then make it modern with some new phrases and links. This is a very handy way to get fresh email content when you don´t have much time.

It´s really not that difficult to come up with something unique when you have a bunch of tricks like these up your sleeves. Try them yourself.

Email content is often inspired by what we read online or in magazines related to our topic. After all, without inspiration, it would be very difficult to produce quality email content on a daily or weekly basis. But, are you writing original content or simply repackaging what you have found elsewhere?

There is nothing wrong with using information you find on another website or blog . . . within reason. It´s not ok to blatantly copy an article and use it as your own, that violates copyright laws. But what if you just rewrite it?

The danger of rewriting or repackaging someone else´s article is twofold. One, if you are going to use someone else´s content, even if slightly rewritten, you should include a link back to their website. Secondly, you run the risk of giving email content to your readers that has already been done.

This second problem is a big one. Your readers subscribed to your email newsletter to receive new and useful information. If you are simply rehashing what you read elsewhere, you can be sure that some of your subscribers will have read the same articles. This drops your credibility drastically.

How can you avoid this issue? It´s really quite easy. You can either hire a freelancer to do the work of writing original email content for you or write your own articles using several different sources. Compiling information from five or six websites will give you more comprehensive email content and offers new, interesting information to your readers. It also helps you avoid the issue of repeating exactly what someone else has already said.

It happens to the best of us, you are checking your stats and realize that your opt-in list has dropped in number. While it´s not a good thing when people unsubscribe, that doesn´t mean that it has to be entirely negative, either. A very good opt-in technique is to learn from your unsubscribers.

You need to make sure that you are asking people why they are unsubscribing. This may seem simple, but it is a very valuable opt-in technique that not a lot of people take advantage of. Not everyone will give you a reason, but enough readers should tell you why they aren´t interested in staying on your opt-in list that you will have a fairly good idea of what is going on. Here are a few of the more common reasons for unsubscribing.

Irrelevant information: This could be because you didn´t deliver what you said you would on the sign up page. Or perhaps the reader didn´t get what they needed from your newsletter.

Too many emails: Are you sending out frequent emails? Some people don´t like to get three or four newsletters a week from one email marketer, so you might consider toning it down. You will automatically receive more unsubscribes when you write more often.

Too many newsletters: If someone is subscribed to twenty or thirty different internet marketers, they are bound to get the same email every time there is a new launch. You can help prevent this from being a problem by not using the standard sales letter and write one yourself. Change the subject line, too and people will feel that you have original email content.

Too much spam: Now, you may not consider your email to be spam, especially if you used legit opt-in techniques to grow your list, but some people will just count everything that isn´t from their aunt or brother as spam, so there isn´t much you can do about this except offer high quality content.

Learning from what people enter in the box when you ask them why they are unsubscribing is a very valuable opt-in technique. Use it and you´ll find out exactly how to help your remaining readers and keep them on your list.

It´s easy to turn every email into a promotion rather than an email newsletter when you are a beginning email marketer. Knowing the difference between the two could help you build and maintain your opt-in list.

Email Newsletters

• Offer quality content

• Focus on retaining existing subscribers

• Build a long term relationship

Email Promotions

• Offer hot deals and sales

• Focus on gaining new subscribers

• Are based on a very short-term relationship

While an email promotion is not necessarily a bad thing, you will probably have more luck in the long run with an email newsletter, which builds relationships with your subscribers. This builds trust and you will find that you make more sales per reader than with a promo.

Another thing to consider is what you are offering your subscribers. If you are encouraging them to sign up for and email newsletter full of tips and information and then only deliver sales information, you will find that many people will unsubscribe in disappointment. Make sure you are delivering what you promise.

Have you ever asked your subscribers what they are interested in learning from you? If not, it is high time you tried doing an email marketing survey.  Surveys let you know exactly what people are looking for when they subscribe to your opt in list and you can adapt your email content to fit what they need.

Throwing together a bunch of questions can make a survey, but it isn´t exactly the most effective way to create an email marketing survey. An effective survey is comprised of just the right questions which will get your readers to tell you what it is that they need. However, unless you know how to interpret the results, there isn´t much point in doing a survey.

That´s where companies like Brick Marketing come in. It can really be worth hiring a company that knows what it´s doing to set up your email marketing surveys for you. They will help you not only figure out what the answers mean, but how to improve your email content.