There are so many variables when it comes to email newsletters that it can be difficult to decide which ones to implement. As mentioned earlier, it´s usually best if you try to test one thing at a time, tracking the results. However, there is nothing wrong with using other people´s times as your starting point. Here are some of the best times to send out various types of emails.

Business Email Newsletters: These should be sent during business hours, Monday to Friday. Often they will be dealt with on the same day if you send them earlier, so it´s a good idea to aim for around the beginning of the business day. Having your email newsletter pop up when your subscribers are sitting down to review their emails is a great way to increase the chances of being read.

Family Oriented Emails: These are often best sent in the early morning or evening, since the majority of parents check their emails in the evenings, after the kids are in bed. Statistics show that the majority of moms are online around 7-9 pm.

Other Email Newsletters: This will greatly depend on when your target market is online. Do they work during the day? Then chances are they will be checking their emails at lunch and during coffee breaks. The evening is a hugely popular time for most people to be online, so this is a good time to test.

No one can give you an exact time (3:12 am) to send out your email newsletters. It might be easier for you to do it according to your own schedule, though most autoresponders allow you to pre-schedule when you want to send the email newsletters. Keep in mind where your subscribers tend to live, as well, since the time zone may be very different from your own.

One of the more common email design questions is how long your email newsletter ought to be. There is no flat answer to this, but there are definitely a few guidelines to help you make your decision.

Attention span. How long is your reader attention span? Depending on the age group you are writing for, this could be quite short (teens and kids) or a little longer (businessmen and moms). Keep this in mind when thinking about email design.

Time. Some people may have a great attention span, but are too busy to actually sit and read through four or five articles in your email newsletter. Keep it shorter for business people who probably won´t have a lot of time.

Ease of reading. When considering your email design, remember that glaring screens are hard to read for very long. If your email design includes a white screen with black text or tone-on-tone text or even white text on a black background, keep in mind that no one will be able to read these for a long period of time without feeling a little eye strain.

Keep your email design easy to read and remember the time constraints and attention span of your readers as you design your email newsletter. This is a vital part of making sure taht most of your subscribers actually read down to the bottom of your email, so it is worth putting some effort into it.

Most people who are just getting into email marketing tend to see only the obvious benefits . . . that you can create a relationship with your subscribers and possibly sell them some products or services along the way. But there is so much more to email marketing that you may be surprised to find it´s actually beneficial even if you aren´t selling anything.

New Skills: You´ll be amazed at how much you learn as you research content for your articles. Learning copywriting and research skills are just a few of the ways you´ll improve as you work on your email marketing.

Information: It´s normal to receive replies to your email marketing endeavors and this can be very informative as your subscribers share information with you. Make sure to read those emails and respond to them (see the next benefit).

Contacts: You never know who might be subscribing to your email marketing newsletters. It´s quite possible to make some amazing contacts that could really help you later on in your business when you are ready to do joint venture projects, etc.

Email marketing isn´t just about selling. It´s often a learning process that can take you a long ways toward your goals. If you are new to email marketing, keep in mind that sales aren´t the only measure of success.

There´s no one right way to do your email newsletter. What works for one company might fail miserably for another. The best way to ensure that you have the success you´re looking for is not to just look at what other people are doing, but to take the time to test each new idea on your own email newsletter to find out if it will work with your audience.

There are various ways to test, but all require careful tracking and record keeping. If you aren´t prepared to do this, then you aren´t prepared to be successful. While there are a lot of fancy programs to keep track of your results, a spreadsheet will often do just fine.

You may want to change all your email newsletters at the same time to see what the results are, or you can do split testing, where half the subscribers receive the old version and half receive the new version. Keep track of where each version was sent and you´ll be able to tell which technique is working better.

It´s usually best to only test one thing at a time. For example, only test subject lines for a month. Then, when you are satisfied with that, test your design. You can even break it further down by testing just color and then text, etc. This will allow you to narrowly focus on the results and to distinguish what is what.

Testing your email newsletters is a good way to come up with the recipe for success for you personally. Your email newsletter is different from everyone else´s and so are your subscribers, so take some time to find out what works with them.

Part of the problem with writing email content is that it tends to take the majority of people a long time to write it. First, you need to think of an idea. Then you have to figure out how to write it. It´s something that can take you quite a bit of time if you don´t know how to speed things up.

Today, I have some tips for you that will get you writing email content faster and easier.

• Start with your main points. There should be a couple at least, per article that you include in your email newsletter.
• Go with your ideas. Scribble ideas down in a notebook to keep handy for when you need that boost of inspiration.
• Fill in the rest later. Just write your main points and then start working on the actual writing.
• Use a template. If you have a basic template, you´ll find that it is far faster to write. For example, you might have a one paragraph intro, a three paragraph article and then a short two paragraph article and your signature.
• Keep up the inspiration. Whenever you come across a link that is interesting and inspires you, save it to a special folder marked “Email ideas” in your bookmarks.
• Write with bullet points. This makes it very easy. Just write the main idea in a short sentence and then add another sentence or two explaining it, just like this bullet list.

Setting a timer can also help you get through the process of writing faster. Just get used to writing to a deadline and you´ll find that you will soon be churning that email content out.

Not every email marketer does his or her best marketing through a steady newsletter. In fact, there are so many ways to use email marketing to your advantage that it would be a shame if you only ever used the omnipresent email newsletter.

Email marketing is an art that requires many approaches. Here are just a few ideas of different ways to use your opt-in list to boost your brand reputation.

• Email classes. Send out lessons every day or every week and always include a link in your sig line.
• Coupons. You don´t have to send out an email newsletter, just giving people coupons or discounts can keep you in touch with them.
• Site updates. Many people don´t necessarily want an email newsletter every week, but they do want to know if you update your website, so make this an option.
• RSS feed. If you have a blog, you might be surprised at how many people would prefer to receive your latest updates via email. Offer this option and watch your list grow without any effort.

As you can see, there are plenty of other ways to do your email marketing, even if email newsletters just don´t interest you. Email marketing is THE way to go these days, so don´t ignore the opportunity just because you don´t want to write weekly articles.

Email marketing can make or break your reputation, particularly if you are using your own name. By sending out subpar emails, you could brand yourself as someone who doesn´t care about anything except earning cash. This is a very bad position to be in, since you´ll find that you won´t make too many sales if people think you are just in it for the money.

Building your reputation as a trustworthy business person is a matter of good email marketing. Here are a few ways to ensure that your reputation is a positive one.

• Be faithful. Send your email newsletters out regularly and make sure you follow through on any promises made in your email. This will help build trust.
• Follow up. When someone emails you, make sure that you email them back or at least have an autoresponder message to reply to them.
• Deliver. Make sure that what you offer people on your landing page is what you actually deliver to them in your email marketing. If you don´t, you will find that your reputation rapidly disintegrates.

Your online reputation is very important if you are trying to earn money. Take good care of your reputation in email marketing and you´ll be able to earn far more.

Email newsletters are a good way to stay in touch with your subscribers and to remind them of your products, but many email marketers don´t use their emails to the best of their ability. You´re already talking to your readers anyway, so you´ll want to ensure that you make the most of this sales opportunity. Here are just a few ways to do that.

• Reviews. Writing an honest review about a product you are promoting or publishing a client´s review is an excellent way to get people to take a second look at the product.
• Discounts. Offering a subscriber-only discount off your product will inspire hesitant buyers to make a purchase.
• Multimedia. Use links to video or audio files where your subscribers can learn more about the products or services that you are promoting.

For many email marketers, email newsletters with a hard sell just don´t work. It might be uncomfortable or perhaps it simply isn´t getting the results wanted. By using discounts and reviews, you´ll find that many subscribers are more responsive to your email newsletter messages.

When an email newsletter has gone on for a long time, it can be easy to start getting complacent about your email content. What you write just doesn´t have the passion and pizazz that it once had. When that happens, you tend to lose readers. But it doesn´t have to be that way. You can pull them back before they decide to give up on you and unsubscribe.

1. Write a contest email. A contest will often draw people out of the woodwork and will cause them to reevaluate your email content in general. Follow the contest up with some passionate writing and you should be able to keep those subscribers.
2. Give something away. This will usually get people interested again and you can continue to hold their interest with quality information afterwards. A free ebook is often a great way to get people´s attention.
3. Write a series. This will keep them opening each of your emails just to see what is coming up next in the series.

These tips will help keep your readers loyal and ensure that you don´t get too many unsubscribes. However, it´s always a good idea to write the best quality email content possible, even when you´re worn out and don´t feel like writing at all.

There are many opt-in techniques that you can use to build your list and many of them work quite well. One opt-in technique that many email marketers are using these days is article marketing. The concept is quite simple, you get people hooked by providing an informative, free article on one of many article directory sites and at the end, invite them to register for your opt-in list to get more information.

Article marketing has been made out to be one of those get rich quick schemes and the result is a lot of spammy articles clogging up the article directories. In order to get your article noticed, here are a few tips.

• No advertising. Don´t mention your company or say anything else that might be construed as advertising within the articles. Save that for the bio at the end.
• Keep it informative. Your article shouldn´t be just a teaser, people hate that. Instead, include lots of real information and then offer more in your email newsletter. They´ll be more likely to sign up.
• Make it easy to read. Use bullet points and subtitles to keep readers interested in your article.
• Not too short, not too long. About 500 words is a good length for an article. You´ll find many that are quite a bit shorter, but they don´t have room to give any information. Too long, however, and you´ll lose your audience before they get to the end where your opt-in information is.

Article marketing can be an excellent opt-in technique if you do it right. Basically, it comes down to writing quality articles to get people´s attention. If you can´t or don´t have the time, consider hiring a freelance writer to do this for you and give them the list above.

Maximizing the effect of an email blast to a group of people, whether subscribers or a rented list, is just good email marketing sense. There is not a lot of reason to send out an email that won´t get anyone´s attention, so you need to make it eyecatching and appealing to your audience. Here are a few tips on just how to do that.

• Use a name. Names of people in the From line can boost open rates by as much as 3%, whereas business names in the same place appear to have little or no effect at all.
• Personalize it. Even though this is a form letter, people like to see their names on the email and it´s a handy email marketing technique that can help you earn people´s trust.
• Watch the links. More than 10 links and you´ll have diminished click through rates. 3-5 is the ideal number of links to include in your email marketing newsletters.

Email marketing is something that takes practice and a lot of tweaking. If your first email blast doesn´t work as well as you had expected, try to determine why it failed adn then adjust your techniques and have another go at it. Not every technique works for everyone, so you´ll need to test anything you come across on this blog or anywhere else on the internet.

Normally we talk about what you should be doing with your email marketing, but it´s really just as important to look at what mistakes you should be avoiding. Many people have to make their own mistakes to learn what is the best way to continue, but that doesn´t mean you can´t learn from what others have discovered doesn´t work. Making new mistakes is always better than repeating what everyone else has done.

Email marketing mistakes to avoid include the following:

• Sending test emails to your entire list. Rather than let everyone know that you´re testing, send out a test email to just a few of your subscribers.
• Not testing your email marketing. This could result in poor code and ugly emails that don´t give the impression you are trying to get across. Make sure you know just how your email newsletters look.
• Not spellchecking. This is a huge no-no. Spelling mistakes in email marketing instantly brand you as an amateur.
• Using the wrong link. This seems to be a very common error that is being made these days and it´s quite inacceptable. As an email marketer, you need to ensure that you are sending the correct links out every time.

Learn from these common email marketing mistakes and don´t make them yourself. You´ll find that your marketing campaigns are far more effective if you can just avoid errors that are all too often made by others.

It can be very discouraging to see your open rates falling. It happens to the best of us, however, and it is something that every internet marketer can expect to see at some point. There are a few reasons why people might stop opening your emails, but most of them have a remedy.

Overload. People often end up with too many emails in their inbox and they just don´t open them all. Making sure that you specify what you´ll be sending and making sure you keep up with expectations will help you keep this type of subscriber reading.

Previews. Some statistics don´t count people who read the email in their preview panes, so check that before you get too discouraged. Often, someone who is in a hurry will just scan an email quickly before moving on.

Holidays. Don´t forget to factor holidays into your calculations. People on vacation often neglect to open their non-vital emails and this could be your newsletter. Rest assured that once your subscribers are back to their regular routine, they´ll be reading again. Keeping the emails exciting is also helpful.

These are certainly not all the reasons that your open rates will drop, but they do tend to be the most common. By keeping your content interesting and relevant, you´ll be able to raise your open rates once more.

Email marketing is always a good method of communicating with potential and existing customers, but it is also a very good method of marketing when the economy is dipping, as it is now. The reasons for this are varied, but here are a few of the more important ones.

Price. You can´t beat the price of email marketing. It´s nearly free to send and free to receive. As opposed to direct mail, email marketing is definitely more wallet-friendly.

Reach. Despite being low cost, email marketing works for nearly every demographic and can be used to market to people all over the world.

Ease of use. If you can talk, you can write an email newsletter. That´s what makes it so simple to use. Of course, it takes some talent and know-how to create a great selling email newsletter, but that can be taught.

Even in these days of a rapidly falling economy, email marketing remains a constantly used medium. Using email marketing has always been a good idea and looks like it will be for some time to come yet.

You probably don´t think of SEO when you´re writing subject lines for your email newsletters . . . after all, they´re being sent to someone´s email inbox, not Google. You might be surprised to realize that SEO actually does matter to some extent in your email subject lines.

ProQuest Technologies recently talked about this on their blog:

Here’s something else to take into consideration: Now that most email services provide multiple gigabyte-sized storage, users are archiving more newsletters than they used to.

On the one hand, doing this adds to their information overload. On the other hand, it enhances the long-term value of newsletters. That means email newsletters are now part of someone’s personal inventory.

While not precisely SEO, it does count. You will find that if you search email inboxes for specific keywords, the emails that have these words in the subject line will be first in the list. This means that having your keywords or at least keywords that describe the content of your email newsletter, should be used in the subject line.

Subject lines are a very important part of your email newsletter, but the fact that people will be searching their email for specific keywords makes them even more vital. Consider using some SEO techniques in your subject lines and make them easier for people to sort through.