Permission is the important first step in building a relationship with subscribers. But it’s no longer enough. You need to be relevant. Because if you're not relevant, you'll probably be deleted - maybe never to be opened in the future either. Your challenge is to have your email stand out amongst the other emails your subscribers are receiving. Here are some ideas:

Encourage only your target audience to subscribe. Rather then hedging your bets by saying ‘Receive our regular newsletter’, hoping you’ll get a quantity of subscribers, think quality versus quantity. Tell people very clearly who, what, where, when and why you'll be contacting them, and then let them make an informed decision to sign up.

'How relevant is it?' answers the frequency question. How frequently should you send your emails? It depends. There is a growing trend away from rigid monthly mailing schedules, and instead publishing when your company has something relevant to say. If it’s timely then you need to send it, if it doesn’t relate to everyone on your list, then you need to consider sending it only to the appropriate subscribers.

Relevance makes it personalised. A 'Dear Bob' appended to the top of a general mailing is not effective personalisation. Personal elements such as addressing the subscriber by name should be used when it really matters in the context of the mailing. It is more important to tailor the content to each reader, because this makes it both personal and relevant.

Segment and tailor emails. Use information you have in your database, such as purchase history, geographic location, etc, to split out your lists.

Send. Track. Analyse. Change. Repeat. This should be your mantra – if your company does the ‘load and send’ style campaigns, you will see a downward spiral of activity and results. An important part of the email marketing cycle is to review the information gathered from a campaign, and make changes based on the information for the next mailing.

Sometimes business people baulk at using newsletter technology because they are not sure they can come up with regular newsletter content.

However it works the other way because once you have the technology in place you can use it for anything:

• new product release
  
  
• breaking industry news
  
  
• opening a new store
  
  
• listings - consumer or industry events
  
  
• calendar reminders
  
  
• photos from events
  
  
• change of website and so on
  
  As I say to business owners - you could be in a sales meeting on a Monday morning come up with an idea - send it out before the end of play on Monday and by Wednesday afternoon have a detailed analysis of what interest it created amongst your clientele.
  
  Quick, cost-effective and with accurate market intelligence -what other form of marketing works like this?