Companies across all industries are devoting more of their time, resources, and budgets to email marketing. Email typically costs less than other direct marketing channels and the return exceeds all other initiatives. This year, the average return for every dollar spent on email marketing was $45.06. Compared to non-email Internet marketing's return of $19.94, direct response newspaper advertising's $16.86, non-catalog direct mail's $15.55, telemarketing's $8.61, and catalog marketing's $7.28, it is easy to see why companies are ramping up their email marketing programs.

In order to achieve the highest ROI, email marketers must get savvy and revise their strategies. For example, monthly email newsletters that were sent out to the entire subscriber base are being converted to targeted weekly mailings that only contain the information that is most relevant to each subscriber. Targeted emails nearly double the click-through rates of bulk emails so if you aren't already using advanced tactics like dynamic profiling and dynamic content to segment your lists, now is the time to start.

Listrak has published an easy-to-use email marketing best practices reference guide with a list of 221 do's and don'ts for list acquisition and management, email design, branding, CAN-SPAM compliance, relevancy, deliverability, reputation, metrics, reporting, managing the opt-out process, and everything in between!