1) Create an in-house review team who will carefully open, read, test, and provide feedback and changes or approval of test email messages. Your company review team can be just one or two people, or more typically five to seven people. We've also sent test messages to well over ten people in organizations, so don't be shy. We've found that in general the more people who get involved with your email campaigns the better the outcome.

2) Your text, images, links, etc. should be "Marketing Ready." Prepare your information as best you can in order to help us prepare a professional, effective email campaign for you. Here are some things to do, and avoid:

DO YOUR BEST WITH
1) HTML documents for your text
2) JPG or PNG formats for your images
3) Screen captures for links to online videos
4) Calls to Action that are clear and easy to engage with
5) Hyperlinks using absolute (full) path to your online assets
6) Hyperlinks to your PDF documents, videos, surveys, etc.
7) Lists and bullet points that help your reader digest your information quickly and easily

AVOID THE FOLLOWING
1) Sending us content in PDF format that we need to reverse engineer into HTML
2) Attachments in your email (this will negatively impact email delivery)
3) Writing errors, grammar goofs, typographical errors, poor word usage
4) Acronyms that you assume people will know (but then may not)
5) Sensational writing, unbelievable subject lines, too good to believe writing
6) Multiple exclamation points !!!, dollar signs $$$, etc.
7) Long paragraphs, highly detailed writing, long sentences, academic writing, etc.

3) Use email subject lines that are relevant to your content. Your subject line should accurately describe what's inside your email. Don't get too clever just to get someone to open your email.

4) To check your subject lines, try this free resource at: http://www.emailsubjectlinegrader.com

5) Test your email campaign messages outside of your usual environment. Send your emails outside your office, try different platforms, read your emails on PCs, Macs, Android, iPhones, tablets, etc. to test your recipients various experiences.

6) Ask yourself, honestly, if you got your email message would you open and read it? Why or why not? If not, make it better until you would open and read it.

7) Is your Call To Action (CTA) compelling, reasonable, trustworthy, and easy to act on?

8) Make the best use of email personalization. Use your recipient's first name, company name, and other demographic information if you have it. This always helps.

9) Consider deploying a drip campaign (a predetermined schedule of a sequence of emails) to automate and simplify your ongoing marketing efforts.

10) Reply promptly to your subscribers when they reply to your email campaign with questions, comments, feedback, etc.

11) Encourage recipients to engage with your email by clicking on links to read the rest of the article, clicking on a link for a free download from your web site, clicking on a link to take a survey, forwarding the email to a friend or colleague, and other actions that generate engagement (and help with email inboxing too).

12) Use dynamic content to generate the highest relevancy. Do this with various subject lines, headlines, body content, different images, different offers, and more. We've seen this kind of split testing with dynamic content be highly effective.