Here's 10 things that we recommend doing to improve your email marketing -

The preview pane

When your readers scan through their emails they quickly decide whether or not an email is relevant to them by having a quick glance at the email in the preview pane. With the horizontal pane you only get around 6 lines of space to display your message and get their attention, and since most email programmes automatically turn off images try to avoid putting images at the top of the email.  Instead use this for textual content that will grab their attention. For the side preview pane you get to see about 1.5 inches of the email from the left, so align all of your content to the left and again try to avoid adding images in that space.

Subject line

Use your subject line to grab the reader's attention and reel them in, this way you have a better chance of the email being opened and read. Try to avoid using boring subject's lines such as “July newsletter” as it won't stand out in your reader's inbox.

Hard bounce

You'll receive a hard bounce when you try sending an email to and address that either does not exist or the domain is unknown. This send's the email straight back to you, don't try sending the email more than 3 times as this could potentially get you blacklisted.

Last month's newsletter

To try and entice new readers to sign up to your monthly newsletter why not show them the kind of content they have been missing?

Only send what's relevant to the reader

A lot of people don't like to receive just any old junk that has no relevance to them, they'll just delete the email and move on. What we'd suggest is giving your reader some options when they sign up to your newsletter on which content they'd like to receive, this means you will need to write 2 or 3 separate newsletters a month but your readers will be getting the content they want.

The spam and junk mail filters

Unfortunately the spam and junk mail filters are continously updated making it nearly impossible to know exactly all of the time what the rules are.  If we did all of our email would get through all of the time to all of the people we sent it.  What we do know is that it works on a point system, you receive a point for each rule your email breaks and the more points you have the less likely that your email is going to get past the filters. Using words like "click here" will go against you so try to replace these terms with something suitable.  Also, it's best to avoid using any of the obvious banned words.  Take a look at your own junk folder and identify the words and phrases that the emails have in common.

From email address

Your readers will want to receive their emails from an address they are familiar with and trust, when choosing your From email address remember to be consistent and use it for all of your email campaigns. Try to avoid using unfriendly addresses such as do_not_reply@domain.com.

Keep it short

Don't bore your readers with long emails with lots of content or articles, if you have a lot to say then why not send two emails?Keep it short and to the point and direct them back to your website where they can read more.

Be consistent

Be consistent with your timing when sending out your emails, your readers will become familiar with what dates they'll be receiving emails from you so make sure you keep on track each month.

Four things to think about

1. Who is going to receive the email?
2. What do they do when they get it?
3. What do they do after that?
4. What will your response be to their action?