1) Spam lists for rental and purchase

As marketers realise the benefits of opt-in lists and the ethical issues and poor response rates of Spam lists, the Spam list owners are getting more and more desperate for your business by using tactics such as calling their lists opt-in!

Don’t touch a list unless they can show you how it was collected. And with good quality lists being available for as little as £65 per thousand why bother taking the risk?

2) New Anti-Spam laws

The new anti-spam laws will have a minimum effect on Spam as 90% of this comes from 200 people in the USA. However be careful that the law does not trip you up and you incur fines of £5,000.

Keep records of where, when and how you collected your recipient’s opt-in and always provide a working opt-out link that removes the recipient immediately.

And while sending email to B2B addresses is still legal on an opt-out basis this is simply legal Spam – it is neither ethical or effective and will simply lead to your company being perceived in a negative manner and your servers will become blacklisted.

3) New Email Clients – AOL 9.0 and Outlook 2003

As 2004 progresses more people will start to migrate to the new version of their email clients.

AOL v. 9.0 and Microsoft Outlook 2003 will not display images within emails as the default setting. To see the images in an email the recipient will have to click on “show images” or add the ‘From’ address to their trusted senders list.

With these new features customers will be able to spend more time reading your emails as the volume of Spam messages will be reduced. Recipients interested in your offer will learn to add you to their safe list – if they are not interested then they should be excluded from your list.

Make sure you make your offering clear in your subject line and the body of your text. Evaluate your email templates without images and see if your offers and messages are still clear and understandable. Also ensure you use a consistant ‘From’ address for all your messages as once a recipient adds you to their safe list your images will be automatically shown on subsequent emails.

4) The end of the cheap and nasty email broadcasters

There are a breed of providers, mainly from the USA that compete on the basis that they can send your emails at unbelievable low rates such as £0.001 per email.

These suppliers overload their servers to generate enough revenue to cover their costs while they also do not check the legitimacy of the email addresses they use.

The result? The servers become Spam blacklisted, emails take forever to send out and your campaigns do not achieve their objectives.

These suppliers are on their way out. They might be cheap but they do not offer good value for money. Instead go for a supplier that proactively works with ISP’s to achieve a "white list" status for their servers. They will provide expert advice and will deliver your campaigns exactly when you require.

5) Further email marketing growth

In the last year open rates and click-thru rates have risen further as a result of marketers learning how to use the medium effectively and recipients becoming more switched on to email marketing messages.

This is set to increase further in 2004 giving email an even better ROI.

6) Maxemail Enhancements

Our Maxemail solution will become even more powerful and have even more features in 2004. Expect to see further developments with:

• Personalising emails
• Reporting Statistics
• Administration of Maxemail users

7) Less Acquisition, More retention

Email is at its best as a retention tool. Marketers are starting to realise the benefits of cross selling and developing life long relationships with their customers via email.

Using email to acquire customers can still be effective but marketers priorities are shifting towards extracting the full value from a customer rather than attracting as many customers as possible.

8) More Email Marketers

Email marketing is no longer the job of a sole member of the marketing department. Instead many people in many departments will be using it to:

• Send newsletters to a specific target audience
• Target new customers
• Carry out research
• Send important product or service updates to customers

Companies need to find a easy and intuitive system that can be used by multiple users. It is also important to ensure users are only provided the appropriate access rights. This will enable the administrator to track the usage of lists, control expenditure and prevent misuse.

Maxemail provides these features. Click here for a free trial.

Wishing you the best of luck for business in 2004.