When it comes to email design, there are a lot of existing templates that you can pick up for free or for a small fee. You might not be sure if this is a good move, though . . . after all, you get what you pay for, right?

Free templates tend not to be of the best quality, but if you find a good email design that you like and that works for your style of email newsletter, then there is really nothing wrong with using one. Particularly if you are not good at designing, you will want a professional email design and it may not be possible to get a custom one if you are just starting out.

Free templates are often a good way to get a professional look when your business is just getting off the ground. As long as you are choosing an email design that fits your business and doesn´t send the wrong message (ie. naked women for a parenting newsletter) it should be just fine and a great option in email design.

Verbs are essential in subject lines for a very good reason. You want people to take action (as in, open your newsletter), and what better way to convince them of that than to give them action words? Using verbs in your subject line makes it more alive and interesting, as well.

Not just any verb will do though. Action verbs are far better than passive ones. Check out these examples.

Passive: “The Latest News is Here!”
Active: “Read the Latest News Now!”

Passive: “Hot New Deal for You!”
Active: “Take Advantage of This Hot New Deal!”

Passive: “Your Discount is Inside.”
Active: “Open Now for a Huge Discount!”

See the difference? Now evaluate your own subject lines . . . are they using active verbs or passive ones? Try bumping up the action in your subject lines and enjoy better results.

Hiring a freelancer to help write some of your email content could well be the best thing you´ve ever done for your business. Freelance writers are usually quite expert in researching and writing on just about any topic and can really give your email content a boost.

Signs You Need a Freelancer

• You find yourself stressing about what to use for email content.
• Your email newsletter often goes out late because you don´t know what to write.
• You sometimes send just ads since you don´t have any email content.
• You have more than two or three email newsletters.

Not everyone needs a freelancer, of course, but if you find that any of the signs above describe your email content, then you need to consider looking at getting some help.

Often, the words you choose affect your open and click rates drastically. People read a lot into a short subject line and it can make or break your email marketing. There´s a reason copywriting is such a highly paid profession . . . words matter.

Without the right words, no one will open your emails, so you need to make sure that the subject line is compelling, but that is only half the battle.

Once people have opened your email, you want them to perform the action you require, so in order to boost both open and click rates, you need some pretty good anchor text as well. This, combined with the lead up, needs to be well-written in order to convince people to click.

One good way to find the right words to use is to simply look at other people´s emails and see which ones make you want to click. They have obviously found a great technique to boost open and click rates, so why not use the same idea?

Email newsletters create a bond between you and your readers. It´s a good way to keep yourself and your business fresh in people´s minds. But, if no one opens your email newsletter, it won´t do anyone much good!

The key to writing great email newsletters that people will want to open and read is to give them what they want and need. That involves finding out what their problems are and then offering the solution, which is a great way to bond with your readers.

Email newsletters are only as useful to you as they are to the subscriber. If you are just tossing stuff out there to get the newsletter out, you´ll find that it doesn´t do you much good and you´ll be stuck with a list of unresponsive subscribers.

Far better is to simply make your email newsletters something that people will actually want to read. Do that and you´ll have no more issues with no one opening your emails.

When you have really great email content, you´ll see your open and click rates skyrocket and your sales will go up as well. Subscribers really enjoy top of the line email content, but how do you make sure that you really are turning out articles they will love?

Ask your readers. Find out what they actually want to read about and then give it to them . . . a surefire way to get your email content on the hot list.

Stay on top of it. By offering the latest news and information, you´ll be ahead of the competitors with their rehashed articles of last year´s big trend.

Add a dose of humor. There´s nothing like making people laugh to get them to open your emails again and again and even pass them on to friends. Add a joke or just write in a funny style to boost your email content.

Offer figures. People love statistics and learning how much people are earning. Work that into your email content and you´ll have some very happy readers!

Email content that really grabs the attention could be the best thing you´ve ever done for your business. It´s worth taking a little extra time to turn out some truly awesome email content and watch your business grow.

The boon of all email marketers is the spam filter. It can gobble up your best email newsletters and destroy your top offers before they ever reach your subscribers. Even if they opted in to your email list, there´s no guarantee that your emails will get through to their inbox.

However, if your subscribers whitelist you, you are automatically granted that special access, without having to deal with spam filters. Whitelisting is a pretty simple process, the subscriber just has to add your email address to their list of accepted emails and your email newsletter will bypass the spam filter completely.

Spam filters are meant to weed out the bad emails from the good, but since they aren´t able to actually judge the email content, spam filters tend to catch some of the good emails, too. Don´t let yours be one of them, ask your subscribers to whitelist you.

When it comes to email design, you really need to make sure that it is easy to read first. No one likes a cluttered screen or tiny fonts that make your eyes hurt. But if you are using HTML email design, you have a choice between one, two or even three columns.

In general, 3 columns is rather crowded and can get a bit confusing, so you´ll probably want to keep it two just one or two. There are a lot of advantages to both options, so let´s take a look:

One Column Email Design

• Simple, easy to read design
• No distractions
• Easy to add photos with text wrapping
• Fonts can be a good size

Two Column Email Design

• One column can be narrower than the other
• Space for ads to one side
• Sidebars add extra interest
• Narrower lines of text are easier to read

Email design is very important to think about. Do you need lots of space for text? Then a single column design might work best. For ads and extra links, you might prefer the two column email design a bit more. It really depends on the purpose of your email and your audience.

One problem that many internet marketers have is keeping subscribers to their email newsletters. It´s inevitable that you will lose some of your readers over time, they may no longer be interested in the information you have to offer, or they might just have too many emails and decide to clear out their subscription list.

But there is another reason that readers unsubscribe and that is because they aren´t getting what they need from your email newsletters.

Keeping subscribers that would normally only leave because you aren´t providing them with the information that they need is something that can easily be remedied. Here are a few ways to do just that.

• Keep your content fresh. Don´t just rehash what is already being talked about everywhere and don´t reuse old newsletter articles very often.
• Find out what your readers need. If you know what they need, it´s far easier to give it to them. Try a survey to find out.
• Give them solutions. Offering solutions to problems that your subscribers have will really help boost your chances of them reading your email newsletters.
• Be interactive. Don´t send out your email newsletters with a “Do not respond to this email” disclaimer. If you are using an autoresponder that can´t forward your emails, add an email address where they can contact you and respond to questions. This will enhance your chances of keeping subscribers, too.

Email newsletters are such a great way to stay in touch with your subscribers that you really don´t want to blow it by offering inferior content. Keep things fresh and useful and you´ll be amazed at how quickly your list grows.

List rental can be a good way to boost your opt-in list if you feel that you aren´t growing it fast enough, but it isn´t always necessary. List rental is useful in many cases, but there are many alternatives that tend to work better. So when should you resort to list rental?

• When you are just starting out and have no list to speak of. At this point, list rental can give you a jumping off point until you build up your own list enough.

• When you have a special offer that you need to publicize further than just your own list. For example, if you are releasing a new product, it can be helpful to announce this to as many people as possible.

• When you have an offer that would appeal to a wide audience. It´s often difficult to get complete information on list rentals, so you´ll need to make sure that you aren´t trying to go too specific with a general list.

List rental isn´t always the best option, but it can be a very good one in some circumstances. Of course, you´ll need to ensure that you select a list rental company that offers safe, spam-free emails for use. Otherwise you could end up in quite a bit of trouble and your investment will just go to waste.

Your open and click rates could always look better, right? Unless you are getting 100% open rates, your emails can be improved to boost those numbers and earn you more sales, something that every email marketer needs. The question is simply in how to go about doing this.

While there are literally hundreds of little tweaks you can make to your email newsletters to increase your open and click rates, it all boils down to three main areas of improvement.

Subject Line: Without an eye catching subject line, your subscribers won´t even give your emails a once over. Dull, uninteresting or spammy subject lines are the main reason open and click rates decrease, so by providing the opposite, you can boost them.

Content: Your content needs to be great. People will quickly realize that your email newsletter is one they need to read for it´s useful and interesting content and you´ll find that your open and click rates increase as your content value does.

Trust: If your readers trust you, you´ll be at the top of their list of emails to read. Not to mention, besides just getting them to open the email, trust in what you have to say will keep them interested in your links as well. Your open and click rates will go sky high as your subscribers learn to trust you.

With great subject lines, useful content and a strong sense of trust between you and your readers, you can expect your open and click rates to go up. It´s a natural response to these important improvements.

There is nothing like reading other email newsletters to stay on top of the latest news and what is going on in the world of email marketing. But that doesn´t mean that you should only subscribe to industry email newsletters. While these can be very enlightening and informative, it´s also helpful to look at completely unrelated newsletters.

Reading email newsletters can really give you a good idea as to what techniques are in use and which ones you´d like to try. If you find an email newsletter that you like the style of, it´s easier to write your own. In fact, you may end up using ideas from various email newsletters that you subscribe to.

There are plenty of places to get inspiration. The next time you are on a website that you are enjoying, no matter what it´s about, sewing or business, sign up for the email newsletter. You can also take note of the sign up procedure and get a good idea of what works there, too.

Take notes whenever you see something that you like in someone else´s email newsletter. You don´t have to outright copy, but it´s fine to take an idea and make it your own. This can really be a useful method of gaining new techniques to spruce up your own email marketing.

If you are still debating whether or not you should try email marketing, here are a few reasons why email marketing is a great way to promote your business.

• More than 50% of internet surfers use email every single day, making this a very effective method of reaching them.

• Email marketing is eco-friendly since there is no paper to waste.

• Tracking is far easier with email marketing than it would be with direct mail. You can add special codes to let you know exactly which email is leading to which sales, even.

• Email marketing can be automated with auto responders, making it very simple to set up and send multiple campaigns.

• Even on a budget, email marketing can reach millions of people for a fraction of the price of direct mail.

• With email marketing, your message gets to the potential client within seconds, rather than days or weeks.

Email marketing can be an excellent way to promote your business, whether online or off. It´s particularly useful for small businesses that have a fairly limited budget, since the cost of email marketing is very low. You can reach thousands of people with your emails and pay less than a Starbucks coffee each month!

Do you need more traffic to your website? Who doesn´t, right? Well, your email content, if done properly, can drive traffic to your website and improve clickthrough rates. Part of the method lies in simply making a regular connection with your readers and reminding them that you exist. With all the information online these days, it´s easy to lose track of websites, so if someone has subscribed to your email, you want to make sure they have the chance to go back to your site.

• Put some content on your site. While you shouldn´t necessarily shorten your emails, having some email content point to further info on your website is a great way to send traffic to your website.

• Offer a contest on your site. Then link to it within your email content. Give some details within your email newsletter, but require a trip to your website for full details and the entry form.

• Summarize blog content. Some email marketers have great success with simply summarizing what they have already written about in their email content. At the end of each summary, they include a link to the blog post or website where you can find more information.

Email content can easily be used to boost clickthroughs to your website and you´ll find that offering something for free or holding a contest is one of the best ways to do just that. Try it in your own email content and you´ll see the results quickly.

You may think you´ve got the perfect subject line, it gets past spam filters . . . but no one is opening your email. What could be wrong? Chances are, your subject lines, as spam filter friendly as they are, are just not what people are looking for.

While the perfect subject line can capture hundreds or even thousands of clickthroughs, a poorly written subject line can cause readers to delete you without a second thought. It´s depressing, but remember that your subject lines aren´t just about getting through the filters, they also need to appeal to people.

What are some signs of a bad subject line?

• It sounds too good to be true. People tend to delete things they don´t think will pan out.

• Your name code doesn´t work, so rather than the person´s first name, they see a subject line that reads something like “Dear %NAME%”. This makes a pretty lousy impression and people will assume it´s just a bot-email.

• You tell them to open the email immediately or pass it on . . . both of these scream “SCAM!” to many people and they will delete it without reading.

Subject lines need to cater to both spam filters and readers, so make sure that you aren´t frightening your readers with poorly written subject lines.