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With the new year upon us I have listed my ten email marketing resolutions for 2010. These are not the typical 'segment your list' or 'send relevant content' suggestions but rather a list of frequently overlooked ideas that used together can improve your marketing results.

1. Repurpose your email marketing messages to social media. Here at Delivra we post to Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin company sites. They are indexed by search engines and extend our reach.
2. Include social media links in your email marketing message and gain subscribers through your own social media pages.  Two free reach extenders that provide great results. Delivra provides easy point and click tools for our clients to use.
3. Test all seven days to determine best sending day. Or don't assume Tuesday/Wednesday are the best days to send even though that appears to be the rule of thumb. Divide your list into seven segments, one for each day of the week, and send the exact same content. One successful Delivra client found that Saturday morning was their sweet spot.
4. Review your subject line history by counting the number characters including spaces. Then  divide in half and use this result going forward. Why? You have about 1/2 a second to capture interest.
5. Review your link history by counting the number of links in the body of past mailings. Then double the number and use this result going forward. Why? More links mean more clicks even if the multiple links go to the same landing page or be creative and use links to web sites, blogs, social media and landing pages.  All variety and calls-to-action that capture attention.
6. Grow your list of recipients. Not room here for all the options, but a new one we will be testing in 2010 is a direct mail form with postage paid reply asking for email address and other information. The form mails directly to a partner data processor. Results are loaded automatically into the Delivra system.
7. Automate lead nurturing. Set up a series of automatically generated informational emails that move prospects through your sales pipeline. This is an included feature in the Delivra system. It is a proven winner.
8. Remove barriers. Email is generally a bridge to some action. Make the action easy. For example, Delivra clients will be able to upgrade to our video hosting tool by clicking a button early this year. Plus the terms of service will be month-to-month to reduce risk. This is a vast improvement to our current salesperson-required, contract-needed, annual plan.
9. Use new metrics. Don't judge success by an open rate. Set goals that you can take to the bank. Delivra's marketing metrics include an ROI metric and goal for every effort.  Marketing is about results and email can help that conversion along.
10. Email enable your blog.  Add a free Feedburner sign up box for subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via email, a web portal, or a news reader. Check out blog.delivra.com for a sample.

There's my new years resolutions. Now where did I put last years?

Neil Berman | President & CEO