Get ready children, we are about to drop some knowledge on you. Pens at hand, eager little faces upturned in anticipation…? Good, let us begin. Today’s lesson: Email marketing – if you send emails, you need to know this. Memeburn has compiled a list of 10 commandments for email marketing to make it the most powerful tool in your artillery.

Lesson 1: “Be CAN-SPAM compliant” – CAN-SPAM is a law passed in the U.S. to protect users from being ‘SPAMMED’. Although the law may not apply internationally, it is common sense to honour things such as avoiding misleading subject lines and ensuring and unsubscribe option which actually unsubscribes users. Know the regulation around the emails you are wanting to send and be respectful to your recipients.

Lesson 2: Keep your mailing list up to date – Memeburn suggests that your mailing list “decays” roughly 25% each year. Make sure you keep adding fresh users to keep your audience at its optimal size and remove users who are clearly no longer reading your mail.

Lesson 3: Expanding your database – Memeburn’s top tip here is NOT to buy contact lists as you open yourself up to scamming and unwilling recipients. Use social media and sign up boxes on your company’s website to aggressively encourage new contacts.

Lesson 4: It is all about building relationships and communicating effectively –

Sending an opt-in email immediately after a purchase makes sure you reach them at a time when the user is already favourably inclined towards your brand and will offer a higher probability of signups than other wise.

Lesson 5: USE the social media following you have worked to hard to build – it is futile to build up a following on social media platforms and not capitalise on this audience. Making it easy for followers to sign up to newsletters or receive special offers makes them far more likely to do it.

Find the rest of their ’10 commandments’ here.

No go forth and bring in the bucks!