Over the past number of years I have had several severe convulsions when I have heard people say “We want to send out an email blast.” A Blast? What are you trying to do? Persuade, communicate, interact or win the Battle of The Bulge? I don’t want to be blasted at. I want to be spoken to. I want to be appreciated. I want to be understood. I want to be valued. Here are some simple rules to adhere to so that you can move beyond the blast mentality and create more effective email campaigns.

• Do some simple segmentation based on recency, frequency or monetary value.  This isn’t hard.  The idea is simply to send one message to your best your best customers, another message to those who once had loyalty but have been trailing off lately, and another message to those who have been avoiding you for some time.
• How about testing some creative?  It’s amazing to me how often companies accept the mentality of “Let’s just get something out there” over the concept of “Let’s test two simple variables with a subset of our list and then run with the winner.
• What if you messaged based on the previous activity of the recipient?  If you have an email delivery system you no doubt have tracking data.  How hard is it to send one message to poeple who have not opened or clicked anything previously, another message to people who have clicked on one item, and another message to people who have clicked on another.

We are not talking about Amazon-style dynamic content here. Just a few simple steps can take your email marketing to a new level.  Stop blasting.  Start communicating.