The landscape of email marketing continues to change and shift such that many of the old school rules no longer apply. Increasingly, email marketers, newsletter publishers and list owners are facing serious, immediate threats. These include aggressive, highly biased spam filters hitting the market and consumer email overload. Many publishers are reporting an increase in subscriber attrition as well as decreased click-through rates.

As a publisher you need to insulate yourself from these risks; this may call for a direct change in strategy. First you should look at how you are obtaining subscribers and the message you send during acquisition. In today’s choosier market this is becoming more difficult to accomplish and establishing trust with your base - as well as earning their permission to receive messages - will boost long-term results.

Provide Value: Quality over Quantity

One of the critical steps a publisher can make is to emphasis quality over quantity. For publishers focusing on content you may wish to emphasize your privacy policy, how mailings are handled, how information is exchanged and the quality of the content you will be sending. Also be sure to note the frequency of the mailing as many users assign value to how often they want to be contacted. For publishers who take a direct marketing approach it may be necessary to write more entertaining copy and detailed product reviews, or to offer unique value propositions in the form of coupons, special offers or perks that can be used only through email contact. Lists are already being judged on the quality of their content regardless of the nature of the message. You must provide value if you wish to hold your audience.

Your Message: Good Composition is Critical

You will also need to focus on the composition of the content you are sending. Aggressive U.C.E (unsolicited commercial email), also known as spam, filters and even CAN-SPAM laws are making it harder for legitimate publishers to get email into in boxes. What started as a small obstacle is rapidly burgeoning into a major problem. As an example, Spam Assassin uses a series of scoring tests and compares an email’s content to a database of fields and assigns a scoring value. Depending on what the system administrator has set-up as the “UCE threshold,” the resulting email message may be blocked or may be flagged as possible spam and sent on to the end user who will probably ignore it. The tests take a number of variables into account and test everything from the body of an email to the servers that were used to send the email. Unfortunately, many of the tests are so intensive that quality publishers can get innocently lost in the shuffle.

Don’t Get Penalized

Here are a few steps you can take to make sure your mail gets through. First, ask your users to “white-list” your email (add you to their “do not block” list after they subscribe). This is handy for email ASPs and for individuals who filter mail on the end user level. Consider adding your trademark to the subject line, as well as including it or your copyright in the bottom of your mail and avoid using phrases that could hand you a heavy penalty. Example phrases or pitches that can alarm filtering systems include: making a limited time offer, making claims to honor removal requests, using the opening Dear Friend, or using a whole line of uppercase letters.

Even the mark-up and design of your email can penalize you if it mimics current trends in UCE For example, using a thick border around the primary table in an HTML email, using JavaScript code - especially JavaScript that auto-executes, using a non-white background, or even an over-sized font. You will want to communicate effectively and clearly using the elements of good design.

You can see an example of a full battery of U.C.E tests and relative penalties at: http://spamassassin.taint.org/tests.html

Choices: What Everyone Wants.

Finally, work on implementing email best practices. Utilize a mail system that makes it easy for users to opt-out of mailings. Odds are you will not get results from users who do not want your email and you may even cause them to lash out at your brand as they become frustrated with the opt-out process. In addition you should consider using an “out of brand opt-out” where users have another brand or Web site in which to complete the opt-out process.

It is also a good idea to regularly prune dead email addresses from your lists and to put forth complete privacy policies. It is essential to stress to recipients upfront what kind of relationship you are forming through email and to make sure they are aware of your policies, mailing frequency, and the procedures they need to take to contact you.

Looking to the Future: Tactics Recap

In the long run, stressing high quality over quantity will allow publishers to set themselves apart from the competitive pack, and this will ensure long-term viability.

Keep these tactics in mind when planning your next mailing:

1. Clearly communicate your privacy policy and the frequency in which you plan to contact users. Do not stray from these policies.
2. Make it easy for users to manage their contact with your brand. A frustrated user will not be a long-term customer.
3. Robust and unique content will ensure long-term loyalty and can also help boost the natural propagation of your content. Always remember to use relevant, contextual strategies with your advertising.
4. Ask users to “white-list” your publication during the confirmation phase of the email list signup.
5. Understand the impact of UCE filters as you write your copy. It is impossible to ensure copy will not get filtered but best practices will keep you from making fundamental or basic mistakes and increase the chance of your mail going through.
6. Follow CAN-SPAM act guidelines.  You can read more about them by referring to the CJU article “Email Marketing Best Practices.”
7. Understand and implement good design practices so you don’t get lumped in with bulk mail. Never mimic the design practices of any blatant UCE you get in your own mailbox.

By using these tactics you will ensure sustainable success, a loyal audience, and increased revenue. Click-through rates will increase as users interact more with your content, and more importantly, subscriber attrition will go down. A decrease in churn rate means the costs of attaining and servicing subscribers will drop as well. In the long run these tactics will put more revenue in your bank account.