If you have been around me for long, you well know by now my fondness for email marketing. It is far and away the most efficient marketing medium on the planet. Actually, let me re-phrase that … it is far and away the most effective marketing medium on the planet if used correctly.

When I say efficient in this particular context, I am referring to four things:

1. Email is easy to create and send. No costly graphic designers or overpaid printers are necessary.

2. Email is cost effective. It literally costs pennies per recipient to send.

3. Email is instantaneous. Get results in minutes rather than days or weeks.

4. Email is effective. If used correctly, email can generate ROI’s that are astronomically higher than traditional marketing methods.

In fact, I often refer to email as “god’s gift to small business”. So if you are not getting results from your email marketing efforts or worse yet, have not even considered email marketing for your business, here are seven must ask questions for success with this medium.

1. Do you have permission?

The first question is absolutely mandatory in this day and age of SPAM. By permission I mean have your recipients given you permission to send them email, which can come in many forms. They could have subscribed for your communication via your website, at a trade show, etc. Past clients and existing clients of course are also fair game for your communication.

2. Are you in your subscriber’s address book?

The proliferation of junk email or SPAM has led to a proliferation of people using SPAM filters, and thus has made life extremely difficult for legitimate email marketers. The way to combat this fact of “email marketing” life is to ask your subscribers to add you to their address book or “safe list”.

3. Is your email relevant?

Make sure your emails contain highly relevant and useful information. By relevant, I mean on topic. If you are in the business of selling wine, do not send an email about dog grooming. A better choice would perhaps be how to properly pair a Cabernet with a filet mignon.

4. Are your messages consistent?

One of the most overlooked aspects of being a good email marketer is consistency. While consistency can mean many things, I am mostly referring to when/how often messages are sent. If you send out a weekly email newsletter, make sure it in fact goes out every week and preferably at the same time and on the same day. If your emails are good, subscribers will come to look forward to and also anticipate your messages. In turn, their expectations will not be met if the message arrives four days late one week or worse yet not at all.

5. Do you respond promptly to removals?

This one is real simple. If a subscriber asks to be removed from your list, by golly remove them. Most importantly is that they are removed prior to you sending the next email. If not, you will run the risk of them making a SPAM complaint against you.

6. Do you measure results?

Measuring results is another oft overlooked aspect of email marketing. To measure results, you must have an email system that tracks opens, click-throughs, unsubscribes, etc. Call us at 888-218-2002 or email me if you would like for us to set up an email marketing platform that measures these all important metrics.

7. Are you testing?

If you aren’t testing different messages and offerings, then you simply aren’t email marketing. Perhaps the single greatest advantage of email marketing vs. traditional marketing mediums is the ability to cost effectively test with real time feedback. Testing and tracking is not exactly easy to do with a print ad and can take weeks to do with a direct mail piece.

Posted By: William Foote, Co-founder of http://www.vmg-interactive.com