An Email Marketing Campaign is more than just a visually pleasing email.

What is then, the anatomy of a Highly Successful Email Marketing Campaign?

The answer is obvious. The highest response to your call-to-action.

How do you do that?

What do you want to do?

Increase sales? Increase web traffic?

Or just to build brand awareness on your product branding.

That’s the first part. It’s all moot if your email is not delivered or even if it is, your subscriber doesn’t read it.

There are no hidden secrets, but there are few principals that you can observe to maximise your rate of success.

1. Permission Based
You wouldn’t want to receive unsolicited emails. Don’t do it to someone else. The rule works both ways. Get permission. Whatever it takes. Sending unsolicited email messages annoys people, as well as hurt your reputation as a sender. The first and VERY critical step to permission-based email marketing is to build your own email list, not buy it from somewhere else.

One very powerful and proven way is with Opt-In forms on your website. There are many ways to get users to register or opt-in. That deserves another posting on it’s own but essentially, give something away. That’s the easiest way. Go on, you can do it.

2. Single is not enough, use a Double
A single Opt-In is no longer enough. Double Opt-In is a better practice now. What does this mean?

In a double Opt-In mailing list, you require for the user to confirm their registration with the email that they will receive after they first register. It’s a double-edged sword, all emails are confirmed before they are added to the mailing list, so you’ll get a real working email and the user acknowledges that he does want to be included. Some refer to this as confirmed subscription or closed-loop opt-in.

3. Keep You List Clean
Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Sometimes, it’s more so. Keep your mailing list clean! Remove all bad email addresses that for some reason, no longer exist or fail to be delivered. Not only will you reduce traffic, you reduce the likelihood of you being marked as a spammer. Another reason is that you will get a better idea of the numbers that you are working with are real and not wonder why you have such bad response!

4. Subject is KING (and Queen and the entire Kingdom over)
Subscribers decide to read an email (or not) based on several factors. Research (Return Path, Inc), indicates that 41.1% of the subscribers decide based on the Subject Line.

Invest 50% of your time of your subject line. I promise, it will make all the difference.

5. Dog Poo to Cat Lovers?
It REALLY doesn’t matter if you have double opt-in, triple opt-in or quadruple opt-in. If the content is not relevant to your reader, then you are spamming. Deliver on what you promised when you offered an opt-in, no two ways about it. Most people weren’t born yesterday. Then they click on the “Spam” button, you become dog poo. Scooped and dumped. You wouldn’t even know what hit you.

The “spam” button is the easiest way to scoop and dump. It&’s automatic. No emotional baggage. No guilt. They won’t unsubscribe. There you are happily thinking that you’ve got a million subscribers. Not!

6. Ladida, What Do I Do Next?
It might SEEM like common sense, but common sense it isn’t. Many emails fail to include a call to action. You DO want some outcome right? Or are you happily just sending out bits of information? You know that the purpose for you to send out the emails is to sell something. Even if it’s just yourself to your fans, ask for a response!

7. Test! Test! Test!
I cannot stress enough on this point. If your email is in HTML, you need to test it before you send. At least on the major email software, like Outlook and even web-based email clients like Hotmail, Google Mail and Yahoo Mail. You will be surprised how the email could look different in each of them.

8. Getting Close And Personal
We’ve all got names. It’s nice to be called our name. That’s who we are. When someone calls our names, we respond. Emails don’t work any differently. Be personal. At very the least, use the recipient’s name. If you can do more with the content, great!

Remember my name.

9. Save Time, Save Money and Make Fans
Any serious Internet Marketer will know that without a system, managing email campaigns become a nightmare. A complete Email Marketing Solution like Jive!™ not only give you features like double opt-in, personalization, it will also track all the emails you send. Every single one. That is so important when you need to see what’s happening AFTER you send the emails, that’s when the fun begins, that’s also when you get to know the truth.

The reports don’t only give you an overall picture on the performance of your campaign, it also gives you the opportunity to improve your email marketing campaign.

Hey, when you understand that much, who’s not a friend?

But FIRST, you’ve got to have that system in place! Take a look at jive , it might be a pretty good place to start.