Email marketing can be a difficult medium to master, but following a few guidelines can improve your results enormously just by helping you avoid bad practice.

Probably the best advice is to put yourself in your recipient’s position. Go to your email inbox and look at which messages you read, which ones you don’t even open because they make you think ‘spam’ and which ones go straight into your junk folder - then use that information to help you design your campaigns.

I'm no fan of buzz speak but right now there's one phrase floating around the internet ether that I'd recommend paying attention to - 'multi-channel marketing'. Or in other words, taking an integrated approach to all your online promotional activities.

It's easy to think of email campaigns as being quite self-contained. But developing an awareness of the way all your different online activities feed off and complement each other is essential.

Even if you're already combining your email promotion with a wider internet marketing strategy, the chances are you could be missing a trick or two.

Email is a fantastic communications tool to gain new customers and stay in touch with existing customers. However there are some challenges and pitfalls to be aware of when planning and executing email campaigns.

Here are some great tips on how to successfully manage an email marketing campaign, courtesy of Academy Internet.

There is a major trend gathering momentum in email marketing right now; smart marketers are increasingly moving towards the use of dynamic communication - the most rapidly growing and compelling area of e-marketing.

This is where the marketer listens to what the recipient is saying, whether directly or through observed activity and targets messages accordingly