Send from Someone – Right from the top line of your email newsletter, you need to be thinking like a reader. No-reply email addresses are not welcoming; they put across the idea that you might not be listening and you’re unavailable (and might get you put in the spam box). Email clients don’t like them either, so if you’re worried about getting a bunch of out-of-office replies clogging up your inbox, think about setting up a special email address to do that job for you and just check it periodically.

"Having engaging content and clear calls to action is much more important than sending at 2:18pm on Tuesday afternoon."

Subject Line – Your subject line is the first real interaction you’re going to have with your reader. If your subject line makes your email content appear boring, or irrelevant, you might have lost them before they’ve even opened it. Be careful with wording your subject lines though, as spam filter can (and will) catch you!

Design – Designing for Email is a complicated process. You need to make sure your readers are going to be able to access your content no matter where they are or what they’re doing, on mobile devices, on their fancy-pants iPads, or even on their ancient work computer that still uses IE6 (heaven forbid!). You only have a split second to grab your readers’ interest, so getting the balance between enticing imagery and easily accessible content is crucial.  

Content – Engage. Use your email newsletters as an opportunity to get your readers engaged with you, rather than just broadcasting your news to them. People want to share with you, and they’ll feel a lot better about you and your company if you invite them to do so.

Code it up - HTML for Email Newsletters is a bit like coding in the stone-age for us techies. There are a bunch of workarounds and tweaks that you need to be aware of in order to get your email to display just as brilliantly as you intended in whatever email client your readers choose to use. The most important aspect to this though, is testing. Test, test, and test it once again. Once it’s been sent, it’s not coming back; you have to get it all right the first time!

Be Consistent – If people expect that your emails are going to be interesting and relevant to them, they’re more likely to open them in the future. If you’re not sure that your content is going to be interesting and engaging, it’s probably better to wait until you have something better to say.

One-Click Unsubscribe Link – Your unsubscribe link should always be very clear and easy to use. If someone has to login to your website in order to unsubscribe to your emails, it not only annoys them, but it could be bad news for your campaign credibility, because after all, isn’t it much easier to just hit “Spam” than go through your complicated unsubscribe processes?

Giving you the Time of Day – There is LOTS of debate about when to send emails, but overall, it depends on your business and your audience. Having engaging content and clear calls to action is much more important than sending at 2:18pm on Tuesday afternoon.

Use the Best technology – By using a reputable email sending engine, you’ll be sure to get into as many inboxes as possible without having to worry about the technical side of deliverability.