The biggest hurdle for any email marketer is to make it to an inbox. Second to that is to have your message opened. Before you can get subscriber attention on that special offer of yours, spend some time working on that subject line and testing for spam.

Your subject line should be convincing, but not full of hype. Stay within customer norms when it comes to terminology used by your industry or niche. Words like ‘Free’ and ‘Buy Now’ can seem appropriate, but are often flagged as spam and can get lost or dumped in junk mail.

When a subscriber sees your email they should see:

• your brand identification
• accurate brief description of contents
• words that trigger a response

Really focus on those elements and you’ll have a much better chance of getting in, and opened.

If you already have an email account on Yahoo, Google, or Bing, go ahead and make sure you’re set up on all three locations. Then send a test email from your email service to yourself on those search engines and to your MS Outlook. If you’re ending up in spam filters, go back and try again.

Your subject line is not the only reason you may end up in spam filters. If your emails don’t get opened up when you send, eventually their inboxes will pick up on that and revert it to junk mail. Make sure your content is really nailing information that your customer looks forward to.

I talk more about this in the Email Success Series. Take a minute to check it out, and make sure you sign up to get access to all of the free audios and teachings. Susan Hamilton Copywriting and Zero To Sixty Marketing have developed this free, no-strings attached series to teach you exactly what you need to know to develop your own email campaigns from start to finish.

Here’s a link to a page with more information, including a sign up form.

Email Success Series

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Find out how long it’s been since your subscribers have opened your message. Then, find out how many read the information and went to your Web site because of it. If you separate your customers based on the last time they opened your message, you’ll get a better idea of active and inactive recipients. In the last three months, how many of your customers opened your e-newsletter? It may be time to send an inquiry to see if there is an area that can be improved, but better yet, specifically target a new campaign to your most current readers. If they haven’t been reading your material in the last three months, there’s little chance they’ll open it now to give you feedback, but I’m an optimist … there is a chance if you take that list and upload it into another with a list name that will compel them, like a question in the subject line. If you hook ‘em with that, they may opt in to your new material with anticipation.

Either way, you don’t want to waste everyone’s time by targeting uninterested readers.

If your emails are dumping into spam filters, it hurts your reputation. Review Email Best Practices to make sure you are within appropriate guidelines to avoid becoming spam.

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I love the beginning of a new year. It’s just a date on the calendar, but there’s something about January 1 that says “fresh” and “new.” I go into planning mode and figure out more stuff in two weeks than in the previous six months.

This first post of the year is a natural time to talk about building your email list. A permission-based email list is a valuable marketing asset. It’s an invitation to stay in touch from prospects and customers who want to hear from you.

What you send to your email list is only limited by your imagination. Keep it fresh. Keep it relevant. Provide useful information that your market will appreciate. Be sure to talk up your products or services and don’t be shy about including a call to action.

Try AWeber Email Marketing Risk-Free

If you’re emailing less than 100 people, you may be inclined to send directly from your company email address. But manually sending mass email has some inherent drawbacks you should be aware of.

• It’s an unfortunate fact that many people click on the “report SPAM” button rather than properly unsubscribing from mailings. That puts your company email at risk of being blacklisted by major Internet service providers.

• Most email accounts have strict limits on the number of emails processed per day. Hit that limit and you’re done for the day. Period. No outgoing emails after that point either.

• If you do email list marketing from your company email address, be sure you’re in compliance with CAN-SPAM law. You need a physical mailing address displayed in your email, clear unsubscribe instructions, and permission granted from each and every subscriber.

We’ve handled all of the above through Feedburner on this blog until now. But as of today, we’ll be offering email subscription only through AWeber . We want more control over the look of our email – better formatting – and also, better tracking.

AWeber makes email list marketing easy. You open an account and work through their setup wizard. Choose a template on your web form. Easily customize it, then copy the HTML code to your web site. Then choose one of their attractive email templates, again easily customized. That’s all there is to it, but if you run into trouble, there’s an extensive help section and live chat. At only $19 per month, it’s an investment that won’t break the bank. AWeber provides and easy way to begin building your list in 2010.

Thankfully, a few common sense steps can slow the deluge of spam to your e-mail inbox:

Spam: Where it Came From, and How to Escape It

by Tom Kulzer, CEO of AWeber

In 1936, long before the rise of the personal computer, Hormel Foods created SPAM. In 2002, the company will produce it’s six billionth can of the processed food product. But that mark was passed long ago in the world of Internet spam.

The modern meaning of the word “spam” has nothing to do with spiced ham. In the early 1990’s, a skit by British comedy group Monty Python led to the word’s common usage. “The SPAM Skit” follows a couple struggling to order dinner from a menu consisting entirely of Hormel’s canned ham.

Repetition is key to the skit’s hilarity. The actors cram the word “SPAM” into the 2.5 minute skit more than 104 times! This flood prompted Usenet readers to call unwanted newsgroup postings “spam.” The name stuck.

Spammers soon focused on e-mail, and the terminology moved with them. Today, the word has come out of technical obscurity. Now, “spam” is the common term for “Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail”, or “UCE.”

Why Does Bad Spam Happen to Good People?

Chances are, you’ve been spammed before. Somehow, your e-mail address has found its way into the hands of a spammer, and your inbox is suffering the consequences. How does this happen? There are several possibilities…

Read the rest of “Spam: Where it Came From, and How to Escape It” on the AWeber blog.

Marketing messages bombard our eyes and ears at least 245 times per day, according to The Advertising Media Internet Center Website. It’s exposure overload and many of us just tune out. If you want to reach me with a TV ad, that ad had better stand out and grab my attention amidst all of its noisy competitors. Even then, for those relatively few remarkable ads, don’t ask me who it represented until I’ve seen it several more times. Simply put, I don’t appreciate the constant interruption. Who does?

Of course, it’s not just TV, but also radio, print ads, billboards, web sites, pop-up Internet ads … the list goes on and on. Seth Godin calls it “interruption marketing.” Big business buys sufficient media time/space to break through the noise from time-to-time. But can the smaller business afford it? Is interruption marketing even effective for small business?

What’s the alternative?

The alternative is permission-based marketing, which begins with building a list of people interested in learning more about your products and services. In his landmark book, Permission Marketing, Seth Godin explains: “Instead of annoying potential customers by interrupting their most coveted commodity – time – Permission Marketing offers customers incentives to accept advertising voluntarily.”

Whether you sell physical products from a brick and mortar storefront or any type of product or service online, it all starts with building your list.

List Building Basics

Online, you need nothing more than a way to collect the first name and e-mail address of your engaged web site visitor. If you don’t have a web site, that’s another topic entirely. (Your customers are looking for you online. Shouldn’t they be able to find you?) That said, it is possible to build a list using nothing more than e-mail, an online newsletter/autoresponder service, and subscribers who initially sign up off-line.

So how do we get permission to build our permission-based list? By offering content that subscribers are willing to register for. This can be a newsletter, free report, white paper, case study, an e-book, or an online demo.

To gain subscribers at your store, advertise your subscriber only content on everything you print. Ask for email addresses when your customers check out. Offer a percent off coupon in exchange for e-mail contact information. Promote it on your phone’s hold message and voicemail.

To gain subscribers on your web site, make your offer compelling and provide a sign-up form.

AWeber (affiliate link) makes the process simple. With an AWeber account, you log-in, easily create your sign-up form with their web form generator, then copy and paste the resulting block of code into your web site. To create an email blast to your subscribers, you merely select a template, add your content and a publication date. That’s really all there is to it. In-depth information about AWeber, including features, pricing, video tutorials, and a comprehensive knowledge-base is available on their web site at www.AWeber.com.

Caroline Middlebrook is about to put this project in action. In September 2007, Caroline quit her day job in order to follow her dreams of becoming an Internet entrepreneur. Her blog is my record of that journey, and she’s been very clear from the beginning that her aim is to learn how to make a living online and transfer that knowledge to others through her blog. She’s already produced an information packed free e-book, How to Build Money Making Niche Sites with WordPress, which she gave away to draw traffic to her blog.

Now she’s at it again, and will be offering a valuable, but free multi-part e-mail course (about one of my favorite topics, StumbleUpon) in exchange for the email addresses of her readers. As with each of her other endeavors, she’ll share her success with her list building efforts on her blog. If you want to learn about Internet Marketing from the eyes of one actively learning the ropes, make sure you visit and subscribe to her Caroline Middlebrook blog.

Photo Credit: Shiny Things