The Initial Greeting
The initial greeting has a tremendous impact on whether a recipient will read the rest of a communication. The tone must match the type of communication and the type of relationship that exists between the sender and recipient. For example, "Hi John" is good for an email from a business to consumer, but too casual for a message to a business recipient. A "Dear Mr. Smith" or "Dear John Smith" is more appropriate for a business to business communication in email just as in a business letter.

Providing References
A very strong technique is including a reference to a specific product or service that the recipient has either already purchased, or that they have requested information about. Don't forget to link directly to the page on the site that corresponds to the product or service you are trying to sell.

Affiliation
When recipients are members of a known group or organization, you can create a positive tie-in. When using this kind of personalization, you must make sure that the relevancy will be obvious for the recipient. This works particularly well for sending partner offers, but again only as long as the offer tightly matches the needs of the target group, and will be perceived as relevant.

The more reliance your email marketing campaign has on your database, the more important that it is to have the correct data. Errors in your data can lead to your mailing showing how poorly you know the recipient, not how well. Always have default information to substitute in case you are missing data. You can write your copy so that substituting this default text maintains the flow of the narrative. For example, let's say you plan on merging the "Company Name" from your database into your email.

Using default text of "your company" works well as in "We know that XYZ Corp. can benefit from our services" or "We know that your company can benefit from our services".
Lastly, always respect the privacy of the recipient and avoid all sensitive information. Anything that might make the recipient uncomfortable such as financial status or health status are best left off limits when it comes to email personalization. In conclusion, leverage the full power of your database to personalize email content to individual names, histories, likes and dislikes. In the world of direct email marketing, one size does not fit all, so use available tools to make your email as personal and as relevant to each person as possible.

Creative Segmentation
If you look at the overall behavior of all of your website visitors, you'll be inundated with a ton of information. Trying to distinguish and identify patterns among such a large group is xtremely difficult, if not impossible.
If you segment or divide your users into logical groups and then compare and contrast how they behave and what they do, you'll have more accurate, actionable information that actually means something. Segmenting your website visitors allows you to develop a clearer
overall picture of your site's performance. If the metric you're trying to measure is how many people buy a particular product, it makes sense to measure that within the context of how many people interacted with the site in a meaningful way.
Since prospects and customers are always more likely to respond to messages that match their interest sets, it makes sense to chop the database into smaller, segmented slices based on preferences and past behaviors, making email messages as relevant as possible to each group. You may use historical data to apply what you know about the likes and dislikes of your target market segments, and develop your messages and offers to fit.

How Often And When to Mail?
Email marketing is a powerful yet inexpensive way to make contact with customers and prospects. Depending on whom you are trying to touch, there may be certain times of day, or days of the week, when the recipient may be more responsive to your message. In addition to specific timing for your email marketing campaigns, the frequency and the number of times to send can all play a big role in helping to improve your results.

When to Email?
For a mailing to business recipients, sending midday from 11 AM through 3 PM is generally the best time. Sending a message earlier in the day can result in a higher risk of the message getting lost in the rush to prepare for morning meetings. Send it too late in the day and it may end up quickly deleted before the recipient leaves for their commute home.

On the other hand, when mailing to consumers, 5 PM through 8 PM is the best time. People tend to check their personal email when they get home from work or after dinner. Most consumers are too busy getting ready for work in the morning to read their email. Like the time of the day, different days of the week can affect your results as well. The best days to contact businesses are weekdays except for Monday and Friday. Monday has proven to have too many meetings to reach decision makers, and on Friday, most people would prefer to leave early before the rush hour than receive your email, no matter how exciting the email and offer may be.

Consumers are more likely to spend more time on the Internet on weekends, and hence have more time to consider your offer. One observation is that since many people tend to check their personal email at various points throughout the day, selecting a specific time to hit your target group while they are online is much more difficult.

Avoid Mailing During Holidays
During the holidays, people tend to be away from their computers and don’t check their email regularly. This means they may get your message when they return together with a ton of other mail that has piled up during the holidays. Chances are all but the most important messages will be deleted in a rush without a second look.

Frequency of the Email
Sending email too often can be annoying, resulting in recipients asking to be removed. Don't send often enough and you may be forgotten when the recipient is finally ready to buy. Generally, once every 2-3 weeks is best. A few exceptions are a daily newspaper or a time-dependant offer like a seminar invitation.
Sending three variations of the same offer to the same recipient is a good way to improve response rates. You should never send the exact same offer more than once. Otherwise you risk the recipient thinking that it’s just another copy of the same email and deleting it. If a recipient has not responded by the third attempt, they are not going to respond at all, either because it’s the right offer/wrong time, or the wrong offer altogether.

Following-Up
It is important to follow up at least once after an initial offer. Many times it has been observed that a number of recipients will click through on the first mailing only after receiving a second mailing. You cannot wait too long to send a follow-up message or they may have forgotten about the original offer. Follow-up contact is recommended 1-2 weeks after the original offer is sent.

Refrain from Spamming
The proliferation of abusive email marketing has dramatically changed the landscape for anyone with an email address. Legitimate marketers now not only have to work harder to obtain a positive response for a campaign, but they also have to avoid a negative response and all this while trying to avoid getting filtered right out of the inbox before recipients even see your message.

Make sure you have permission to communicate with every person on your lists. Many spam emails are now claiming "you signed up for the XYZ list" when in reality there is no existing relationship. If someone has indeed opted-in to your list, make sure they understand when and where this took place. If their relationship is with a third party that you are partnered with, make sure to spell that out instead.

You may be better off with a partner sending on your behalf, so as to avoid any confusion about exactly why the recipient is being emailed. Once you've crossed the line with a recipient by spamming, there is usually no going back. The same ability of email marketing to directly reach recipients, can inadvertently offend them. Like the difference between using a chainsaw to cut up a fallen tree versus accidentally severing your own limb, email marketing requires both care and knowledge to use correctly. Make sure you stay on the correct side of the line, and you can put that power to work and start improving your bottom line results.

Avoid Looking Like Spam
These days, many people’s email inboxes are protected by some sort of spam filter. The purpose of the filter is to block spam email from arriving in the user’s inbox. One of the methods used by spam filters is to identify certain words, known as “spam triggers”, found within your message. If your email contains too many spam triggers, it will automatically get deleted before reaching your subscriber’s inbox.

Here’s a few frequently used spam trigger words: money back, order today, cards accepted, order now, extra income, money-back guarantee, for free, 100% satisfied, special promotion, check or money order. To avoid having your message automatically blocked, check your message content first BEFORE sending it186