emia; strategies

Al DiGuido believes that irrelevant email is simply spam (I hope block lists don't agree). Any email that does not satisfy the subscriber's implied need when s/he signed up, is spam. In actuality, subscribers routinely ignore irrelevant email, and when the email gets excessive, they unsubscribe. Information overload is a clear and present reality. You are doing your customer no favors by sending them irrelevant emails, and you are also probably losing money if you outsource sending on a per email basis.
Generate Returns, Don't Focus on Design Alone
Still on the theme of irrelevant emails, marketers should focus on their content over their email's creative design. Small operators don't really have problems on this score. If they have content, they put it in; if they don't have content, they will probably lack a serious budget for creative.
Big web sites with a marketing team or which outsource email copy and creative to an ad agency, should monitor indicators which let them know whether the emails are affecting the bottom line positively or negatively. The team responsible for creating the message must be accountable for the ROI (Return on Investment). The investment means man hours expended, and salaries and payments received. The return is the amount of sales. If the ratio of return to investment is less than one you are probably better off without your current messaging team (retrain or fire them).
The fact is, some email is for branding, sort of like Super Bowl advertisements. Your sales won't jump the day after (unless you have a very special offer) so the ROI is terrible in the short term, but everybody knows you and you are in their minds the next time they want to buy your next product. Some email campaigns are like that, but it's not every company that can afford Super Bowl advertisements. Emails are much cheaper, but if the major purpose of your email campaign is to increase sales and it's just serving as a branding tool, then your goals and your achievements are out of alignment (change the messaging team leader).
If you have a handle on what I have written so far, you will probably have a lot of work to do. So keep these points in mind: content over creative, measure ROI, avoid irrelevant emails. That's three.
Now I will go into some other points concerning email strategies that require a little more day to day managing than these first three, and are more in line with production companies that have email advertising. You can only do these if you have a team who handles your email messaging and who also keeps in touch with your customer service section.