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.

In the not too distant past, footers were seen as the dreary domain of permission based email marketing. Full of dull clauses, legal statements, obligatory copyright markers and contact information.

With a new breed of information-hungry designers emerging to the forefront of web design, the footer has begun to evolve into a hotbed of information. A prime example of this on the web is the recently redesigned BBC web portal.

The slow reaction by some email marketers to changes in legislation earlier this year highlighted a lack of awareness within the industry regarding the law.

There are a number of regulations surrounding email marketing which differ according to whether you are targeting an individual or an organisaton so it's important to keep up-to-date with the latest legislation and best practice.