Many successful email marketers made it by having multiple email newsletters. This can rapidly get confusing if you aren´t careful, particularly if you have similar topics in each one. Trying to keep track of everything can become a nightmare without some good organization.

Email newsletters can be set up pretty quickly with a decent autoresponder service, so it´s tempting to create a whole bunch . . . after all if one email newsletter earns you money, ten ought to bring in ten times that amount, right? The problem lies with producing content for ten different email newsletters on a regular basis. This is something that many people are unable to do for themselves.

It´s a good idea to start out slowly if you plan to write your own email newsletter content. Don´t do more than two to begin with and then gradually add more as you feel comfortable with the additional work load. For many email marketers, it´s just easier to hire someone else to produce the content while you focus on the marketing and management side of things. This may in fact be the best option since it allows you to work on publicity without having to stress over email content.

Another very useful tool for managing multiple email newsletters is a simple spreadsheet. Keep track of which articles went out, your subscription numbers and the frequency each email newsletter is sent out. This is especially vital if you are sending your email newsletters out at different frequency rates, to keep track of which ones have been sent and which are still waiting to go out.

Staying on top of your tracking and analysis will always be very important, as well. Once you have a system worked out for the content of your email newsletters and are able to track everything, you just need to stay organized in order to make it all work.

You can learn a lot about email design from magazines. When was the last time you opened a print magazine that had dozens of elements and short clips on every single page? Probably not very recently. That´s because magazines know design. They´ve spent years and thousands if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars on researching what makes a magazine easier to read.

While email design is definitely different from magazines, it is usually harder to read and often requires even more simplicity. Making it easy for your readers to get the information they need in a hurry will keep them reading. Having a dozen different sections across the email and everything all cluttered will not help them read quickly!

Email Design Tips

• Color. Keep the colors to a minimum, a full rainbow palette can be quite the eyesore.
• Background. Backgrounds that are lighter than the text tend to be easier to read. Avoid images.
• Columns. Separating columns is a good idea, but don´t have more than two, since this can be very difficult to read.
• Images. Make sure your images have alt tags in case they are blocked by the email client and don´t include any vital information in them.

Simple email design will keep your subscribers reading. If you make things too glitzy and confusing, while it might be amazing to glance at, you´ll be turning a lot of readers away because they simply don´t have the time to sort everything out. Keep your email design simple.

Many email marketers also run a blog and one thing that can be very useful for this is to make sure that your email content and your blog content work together. This can be very good for a variety of reasons.

Continuity. Your readers will appreciate the professionalism of you having the same flow in your email content as on your blog. It looks better and is easier to relate to.

Repetition. They say that the average person has to see an ad about 7.5 times before they will buy the product. Having the same call to action on your blog and in your email content automatically doubles your exposure.

Value. Covering a subject on your blog and then extending that in your email content and making reference to it will help encourage readers to go check out the blog or sign up for your newsletter if they haven´t already.

Email content can be very useful on its own, but when combined with what you already have on your blog, it can really boost your sales. The double strong message will reach more people and that´s always a good thing!

Email marketing often works best if it is extremely targeted. There´s no point in sending an ad for cars to a list of people that have a variety of different interests. You´ll have far better results if you just stick to sending out emails directed at the people receiving them.

Segmenting email marketing lists is a technique that the big and successful email marketing companies use to ensure that they get the highest click through rates possible. In this game, it´s all about how many people open your email newsletter and actually respond to it, so it´s in your best interest to divide your main list into smaller segments. You can even send out the same product announcements, but with a twist.

For example, let´s say you are marketing a new lotion. For stay at home moms, you might write the newsletter based around how dishpan hands can be very unattractive and itchy, or how babies need extra moisturizing. For your car fanatics, remind them that the heavy duty grease cleaners on the market can be harsh on your skin and it´s a good idea to moisturize. Each segment can be marketed the same product, but with a different spin on it to direct it at them. This is an excellent method of gaining extra sales.

Segmenting your market is just good email marketing business sense. It allows you to direct emails at each person specifically and their interests, resulting in more sales.

It seems like a fairly simple thing to look at your open and click rates and see how your email marketing is going, but unfortunately it´s not. There are a lot of factors that affect your open and click rate and they could be causing you to be getting inaccurate numbers.

Invalid emails. It happens in every list, someone wants the free ebook but not the newsletter, so they toss out a useless email or one that they later cancel. These emails will just cause bounced newsletters and make your open and click rates go down.

Inactive subscribers. These are the people who may have been interested in your email newsletter, but later got overwhelmed or lost interest and quit opening your emails. They don´t respond to special offers or ever have anything to do with your email.

Spam filters. Some inactive subscribers may not even see your newsletter if their spam filter is catching it. The best way to avoid this is to get people to add you to their safe list when they subscribe.

All of these factors can really throw things off when you are looking at your open and click rates. It´s a good idea to start eliminating all hard bounced emails, if you aren´t already, and separate your email lists. All unresponsive subscribers should be on a separate list that you either email less often or try sending out a survey or special offer in an attempt to bring them back. This should greatly improve your open and click rates.

The next time you´re running out of ideas for email content, try sending out a survey. Thinking up questions is often a lot easier than writing an informative article and can be a great way to get some reader feedback. This will help you out, too, both with email content and finding out exactly what interests your subscribers and what they want to see more of.

An excellent way to get more readers to participate in an email content survey is to offer a special discount or deal to anyone who fills out the survey and sends it back. Not all your readers will respond, of course, but those who are interested in helping you out or getting your product at a discount will be more than happy to do so.

The benefit of using surveys and special offers as email content is that they are almost always welcome. People love to get a good deal and they love to answer questions. It´s the perfect solution to writer´s block. Not to mention, it could land you some extra sales while you´re at it!

Subject lines can literally make or break your email marketing. Poor subject lines will result in poor clickthroughs and you´ll end up losing money, rather than making it. Email marketing tactics are constantly evolving as readers get used to them, but there are a few constants that will help your emails get opened more often.

Subject Line Tips

• Ask a question. People instinctively want to answer questions, so they will tend to open emails with a question in the subject line.

• Be personal. Using the subscriber´s name will certainly help you boost open rates and making the subject lines sound personal “Wilson, I loved your website”, tends to get people to open emails, as well.

• Ask for help. What is your response when someone asks you to help them out? Most readers will be more than willing to help, but first they need to know the problem, so they will open the email.

• Solve an issue. Everyone has problems and you are in the unique position of knowing what your readers need. Making that a part of your subject line is a great way to get people to pay attention.

Your subject lines need to stand out in an inbox full of emails. Think about how it will appear as someone is scanning dozens of new emails and trying to figure out which ones are worth reading and which should be deleted. Your subject lines will be far more effective.

Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even courage but simply because they have never organized their energies around a goal. - Elbert Hubbard

We work best with goals and email marketing is no different. It is far easier to get where you are going if you know what your goals are and have mapped out a way to get there. With email marketing, this can be as simple as writing down how many subscribers you want to have within six months, or the rate of clickthroughs that you would like to attain.

Goal setting is something that successful people do well and it is a great technique to better your email marketing campaigns.

Be realistic. You need to make sure that you aren´t aiming for something that simply isn´t possible. For example, you aren´t likely to make it to 100% clickthoughs any time soon (but if you do, please share your techniques!)

Start small. Don´t aim too high with your first goal. This can be very discouraging when you see how slowly you progress.

Have mini goals. If you decide that you want to have 1 million subscribers in five years time, then you will need some motivation along the way. Plan out mini email marketing goals that you can reach each month or within a year, etc. This is like building steps to your main goal and will make it more achievable.

Set goals for your email marketing business, in general, as well as for each campaign that you set up. You´ll find that it is far easier to work with concrete goals in mind.

Offering secure email content means that your clients and subscribers will be able to trust you and will be more likely to open your emails. Many viruses come via email, like the infamous Brontok and can end up shutting your computer down. For this reason, many people are understandably reluctant to open emails from people they don´t know.

To make sure that your email content is not causing issues, you should have an antivirus installed on your computer, as well as use an email client that offers scans of all incoming AND outgoing emails. Then let your subscribers know what measures you are taking to ensure that you will never pass them a virus. This will build trust and your email content will be read more often.

Another good idea to make sure that your email content is always secure is to never attach anything to your emails. Attachments are likely to carry .exe files that can include viruses and even if you are sending clean attachments, most people will automatcially delete these emails, particularly if they aren´t sure of who you are.

If you want to send your subscribers a program or PDF or anything else that would normally be attached, rather than included in the email content, use a link to send them to a webpage instead. This way, they can download or view the item online and your email won´t throw up any red flags.

When it comes to opt-in techniques, you want to make sure that your email is up to date, or you´ll end up losing subscribers as soon as they sign up. How does this happen? Very easily, unfortunately!

Think back to when you wrote your autoresponder messages? How long ago was that? It´s easy to get caught up in sending out new offers and writing additional emails for your older opt-ins, but don´t forget to update your autoresponder, as well. It´s a very important part of email marketing, to keep your opt-in techniques up to date.

While the basic information that you wrote in your autoresponder messages may be relevant still, make sure that any references to dates are changed regularly or simply eliminated. In fact, when you are writing autoresponder messages, it´s best to just aim to write with the future in mind.

Skip dates. Save the mentions of specific dates for your irregular emails, the ones with special offers.

Go with evergreen material. Writing information that will be useful and true for years ensures that you won´t have to spend much time on updating your autoresponder messages.

Make note of needed updates. If you write about your upcoming products, make sure to update this section on a regular basis. It can help to remind yourself with a note.

Opt-in techniques that keep your automatic email newsletter up to date will save you a lot of time in the long run, freeing you up to work out new email campaigns.

Everyone wants their email newsletter to be popular. One of the things that tends to indicate popularity is when you see something everywhere. For example, every time there is a trend, you see that particular bracelet or hairstyle everywhere you look. The more you see it, the more you want one of your own. The same thing works with email newsletters.

Be everywhere. When people see your name or your email newsletter popping up all over the place, they will quickly decide that you must be writing something well to be so popular and soon your opt-in list will grow to be bigger and better.

There are several ways to appear everywhere. Here they are:

Write guest articles. This can be for other websites, blogs or email newsletters. The idea is to get your name out there, along with a link to sign up for your email newsletter.

Get listed. In directories, that is. There are hundreds of ezine and email newsletter directories, so get listed in every one that fits you. These probably won´t bring you huge amounts of subscribers, but even one or two from each site can add up quickly.

Be newsworthy. Write about newsworthy things and then send invitations to major blogs on that topic to check out your email newsletter.

Join giveaways. Join every giveaway possible and people will begin to associate your email newsletter with free stuff and quality.

Being popular is often the illusion first. Then you will actually begin to be popular and see far more people subscribing to your email newsletters, which is the main goal, after all!

Email design seems pretty simple . . . most people figure that it is just formatting your emails to look pretty. That´s not all though. White space plays a vital part in email design and you need to be sure that you incorporate it into your email template.

White space gives the eye a chance to rest, something we tend to need more online than off. For example, a print newsletter can get away with having all the elements closer together, while an email newsletter will need more space. It is physically harder for us to look at the bright monitor than a piece of paper and people tend to move away from email design that is just solid text.

To make your email newsletter easier to read, you must have white space in your email design. This means leaving a little space around photos or images and breaking your text up. You´ll notice that typical online formatting has space between the paragraphs, which makes it easier to read.

Incorporating this basic principle into your email design can really help boost the number of clicks you get, since more of your subscribers will actually read through the email. White space helps people keep reading, so they will get more of your message. Try it in your next email newsletter and see what happens.

It´s a common problem for many email newsletters, the list gets old and a huge percentage of the subscribers who used to open all your emails are now ignoring them or only open one every couple of weeks. These are basically dead end subscribers, they aren´t contributing to your traffic or sales and if you are paying per subscriber, you will want to weed out the non-users.

Morgan Stewart from The Email Research Center had and interesting post on this very topic.

The grim reality is that subscribers tend to interact with your newsletters less as time goes by. This begs the question, why would you want subscribers who signed up three, four, or five years ago on your list? There is a good chance these subscribers are just fluff and not driving much traffic to your site.

I received this excellent example from MediaPost. Instead of waiting until their list grows old and tired to clean it up, they keep their list evergreen by maintaining an annual subscription model. As you can see, my subscription is up this month and they recently started running these renewal reminders at the top of my daily email.

There is an example on Morgan´s blog of the MediaPost email newsletter that uses this annual renewal technique. It´s a good one because it ensures that your subscribers really are interested in hearing from you. If they aren´t, they are purged from the list when their year expires.

This technique should help your email newsletters be even more productive, bringing in great open and click rates and keeping a clean list. Ensuring that you have an active subscriber´s list is a good way to keep your email newsletters high quality and avoid being deleted or charged as spam.

Everyone knows that your subject line plays an extremely important part in getting your emails opened, but many email marketers who are just getting started really aren´t sure how to go about writing the best subject lines.

Subject Line Basics

• Use from line. Your name or company name should be in the from line, eliminating the need to repeat it in the subject line. You will save a lot of space this way.

• Write headlines. If you look at a newspaper or top selling magazine, you will see headlines that jump out out at you and make you want to buy that issue. Do the same with your subject lines to get people to open your emails.

• Test everything. Without testing, you won´t know how effective your subject lines are, and won´t be able to single out the techniques that work for you.

• Important info first. Since subject lines are so short, you want to put the most vital info at the beginning to grab people´s attention. You can usually count on about 50 characters for your subject line before most email programs will cut it off.

• Don´t exaggerate. You want people to open your emails, but that doesn´t mean you should lie in your subject lines. Stick to the truth, but make it sound catchy.