Andrew Seel, Director of content specialists Qube, gives his critique of one company's marketing email and offers advice on how to optimise its performance.

The monthly email newsletter from GAAP Web, a specialist jobsite for finance professionals, provides insight into the latest industry issues and acts as a touch-point with their recruitment consultancy recipients.

Aiming to position the company as thought-leaders within the industry and improve traffic through to their site, the challenge they face is that of a time-poor audience - so the newsletter has to grab their attention immediately.

Andrew Seel takes a look at how clear messages and more direct calls to action can quickly alert recipients to why they should sit up and listen.

How one company's new approach to email marketing has delivered real results.

Open and click-through rates form the benchmark by which most email marketing is judged.

However if your aim is to increase sales from your online shop, without the ability to link click-throughs to a sale value these faithful metrics aren't the best measure of success.

Thomas Pink, luxury shirt maker with a global customer-base, realised that to evaluate their campaigns and establish a return on investment required a new and different method, one that would allow them to see exactly what their recipients were spending.

The changes to the way Microsoft's Outlook 2007, one of the most popular email clients, renders emails could have some detrimental effects to how your messages appear at the recipients' end.

However it's not all bad news – there are a number of ways to mitigate against the otherwise negative impact on your carefully prepared designs.

We take a look at exactly what you need to know in order to keep your emails looking and behaving exactly as you had intended.

Easing your email woes and worries, we offer the answers to our readers latest questions.

A. Internet usability guru Jakob Nielsen says web-users go to great lengths not to read long tracts of text.

He suggests: ‘Avoid teasers that try to entice people to click to find out what the story is about. Users have been burned too often to wait for a page to download unless they have clear expectations of what they will get.

‘In print, curiosity can get people to turn the page or start reading. Online, it’s simply too painful for people to do so.'

With only 40-60 characters – that’s 6-10 words – to put across your message, any subject line needs to get straight to the point.

Sum it up

A good subject line explains what the email is about in terms that appeal to and motivate the reader. It is a micro-version of the email content.

Words to avoid

Avoid words commonly associated with spam emails such as SEX, FREE, ££.

Legal issues

The EU states the sender must identify themselves clearly when sending marketing emails, so make sure you clearly identify yourself in the 'From' field.

Being upfront about who you are keeps you on the right side of the law. If you are cryptic your email is more likely to be treated with suspicion and dismissed as spam.

Good practice

These are some great examples of subject lines that immediately engage the recipients' attention.

Online travel brokers Expedia.com get straight down to it with: Ski holidays from under £170

Apple Computers offers: Priority information exclusively for you from the Apple Store

Egg shouts: Loud & Proud. Your brand new statement from Egg

New Media Knowledge asks: NMK News: Dude, Where’s My Brand?

If you'd like to see your question featured in next month’s Email Marketing Manual send it to answers@emailmarketingmanual.com

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'Very informative and interactive!'
Caroline Woods, Leger Holidays

Academy Internet is a rapidly growing e-learning and internet marketing consultancy which delivers measurable results for customers with training, e-learning and internet marketing projects.