So maybe you've tried some email marketing tactics that didn't work. Or maybe you're doing a little preventative research before you launch a campaign. Today's topic will help you sidestep the biggie, beginner's blunders. As you'll see, there's plenty of overlap in these mistakes. They work together for success, but can also combine to equal certain doom for your campaign.

1. Wrong list. The right audience is paramount. It seems quite obvious, but also presupposes knowledge of your target reader. If you have slowly developed your own list through a double opt in subscription on your Web site, congratulations. You should have this list issue pretty well dialed. It's when you start renting lists that this becomes a major issue. You can use magazines' list rentals and the information they provide on their audience as your barometer for all list procurement. Based on direct mail metrics, the list is said to account for 40% of your success rate. That's pretty significant. If you're out list shopping, be cautious, metrics driven, demand more information, and test the waters.

2. Irrelevant content. Once you're pretty sure you have the right audience, it makes sense that you need the right content. Relevancy takes into account content, creative, audience, timing. This doesn't require higher calculus to figure out, but does support of lot of marketing strategy development. It is said to account for another 40% of your success rate. Readers will only respond to information that is important to them and engaging enough to consider. Of course, this is always easier said than it is to actually accomplish.

3. Poor creative execution. Even with the correct list and great content, your message will be lost without reasonably professional creative development. This includes "from" and subject lines, graphic treatments, artwork, photos, logos, colors, fonts, formatting, as well as spelling, grammar, and the amount of information. Traditionally, creative is said to account for the last part of the 40-40-20 percent rule of your success rate, though I tend to believe it's far more important, intricate and subtle. With all the sales drumming and information bombardment nowadays, how are you going to attract your audience? Is your email engaging? Is the offer and its layout intriguing? Do you offer a reason to learn more?

4. No call to action nor landing page. Now that I've opened your email and I'm reading it because the artwork and offer are quite interesting, you need to give me a reason to click, a purpose to learn more, a sense of urgency to act, a hook to take the plunge. Any combination of: "call today," "act now," "learn more," "sale ends Friday," will usually do the trick, depending on your sales style and needs. Once I do click on the link, I want the landing page on your Web site to be just as relevant. It should continue with stellar content and creative to bring me closer to browsing, shopping, finalizing the sale, or sharing information.

5. Ill timed frequency and delivery. Readers can only tolerate receiving so many marketing emails from you each month. It's necessary to know where you must draw the line before you cross it. Readers who feel badgered will unsubscribe from your list. Be cautious and nurture your list. Make each email matter. And when you do hit the send button, do it on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, sometimes Thursdays. Statistics show these are the best times of the week. The good news here is that timing and frequency are completely flexible, testable, and easy to change. Start tracking when you send your emails and how often, then watch to see how these affect your success rate.

6. Dearth of strategy and campaign. Successful email marketing requires forethought, planning and a budget to continue with a campaign. The same holds true for advertising in any medium. A single insertion ad in the local newspaper, for instance, is nearly a complete waste of money. However, an ongoing media buy in several local and regional publications along with radio, Web and outdoor is a powerful combination. The trick is to hit your audience with the right message more than once, without violating email frequency expectations. For example, if you have a yearly event, you can email pre-show to elicit excitement, during the show with news, and post-show with pictures and commentary. To do it well requires some thoughts around a campaign that ties into the event.

7. Opaque to transparency. The work necessary to appear transparent is part and parcel in the email marketing gig, especially for a list that you rent. Your audience needs to trust that you're not hiding online viruses or worse. Interestingly, the same elements that can help alleviate these concerns are also helpful for improving click through rates. Here's another area where writing superior "from" and subject lines becomes essential to your success. It's also helpful to include a signature with contact information and make it super simple to manage subscription accounts and to unsubscribe.

Seven common mistakes. We'll file this under basic, though these bad habits are still rampant among the expert class. Surely there are more, such as harboring the wrong expectations or using home email systems for bulk mail delivery. But these seven will suffice for now. It's enough to keep any email marketer busy for some time. Good luck! And please let us know how it goes.

By most accounts, 2008 is a good season for online retail. Some of the stats depend on the type of products sold. Video game sales are up dramatically, while clothing and toys are down. But on average, online sales is expected to grow some 10 percent over last year in the U.S., this according to eMarketer, who provides stats on such things.

Here’s a graph they published on iab.net:

Another 2008 holiday sales study by Forrester Research projects a 12 percent spike online, compared to just two percent for bricks and mortar spaces. This all sounds lovely for our eCommerce efforts. But financial industry stats are one thing.

You know better than anyone whether the 2008 season is silly or sad when it comes to your online sales. To help out, just in time for the holidays, here are seven ways to maximize your online sales potential this season. If your sales are lagging, implementing these techniques can help you join this trend of better than 10 percent growth over 2007.

1. Make the shopping experience hassle free

Increased traffic with the holiday season is a perfect time to update your Web site. You want to ensure that your shoppers experience a site that is easy to navigate and user-friendly. Some ideas to make things a bit friendlier: large, clear images to showcase products; improved search functions, with options like best-selling, and featured items; video tutorials explaining how to use and why to buy those big ticket items; detailed FAQs; product reviews.

If you use Interspire Shopping Cart, be sure to take advantage of all elements that the software has to offer. There are some powerful options that will positively affect sales, available with the tick of box. For instance discount coupon codes and the flexible banner promotions system, as well as free shipping (which you can limit to selected cities/states/countries).

Using these simple options with help your visitors find the products they want most and encourage them to buy. So too, set up categories and provide the option to easily view popular brands or to shop based on a price range.

Security can also play a role in the hassle-free experience. This may no longer be a priority consideration for online shoppers visiting brand name retailers, but it’s always a buying concern at smaller online stores. Be sure to beef up security on all customer checkout pages. How? Grab yourself an SSL certificate from Verisign.

Basically, hassle-free is a promise that’s not always so hassle-free to keep. When investigating your site for potential issues, be sure to double check things like how error messages appear, or the experience of the final checkout. If a visitor needs to register or sign in, how does this affect the current sale? Inspect every link and consider it from your shoppers’ perspective.

2. Consider the design, look and feel of the shopping experience

Design is paramount. Packaging sells, and it’s tightly woven into the hassle-free experience mentioned above. Your site may boast phenomenal backend functionality, but without the nice site design, you’re going to lose sales.

This can be due to buyer frustration with an outdated, clunky system, or their concerns about credibility. Just as important, the store design affects the perceived value of your products. As retailers, it’s the constant consideration, to amp the perceived value.

All other things being equal, shoppers will buy the product that’s wrapped with service as well as ambiance. Online, this is all about the design and how it connects to the usability of the site.

Design is a special consideration during the holiday season when more people are searching online for gift ideas. If you’re losing traffic or if you have a high bounce-rate, you might consider a design face lift. Update your product pictures and be sure they showcase and amplify the perceived value.

Showing images of people using the products is also proven effective to increase sales. So too, visitors want to see pictures of people or a design that they can relate to, based on the demographics for the product.

If your site design is already topnotch and user feedback has been as positive as the sales results, you might consider temporary holiday artwork. Dressing up the site with seasonal bling and marginalia can also improve your sales odds.

3. Increase the frequency of your email campaigns

With email being inexpensive and extremely effective, it’s okay to increase the number of emails you send out during the holiday season. This will meet customer expectations, and while you can’t avoid some folks on your list viewing your emails as annoying, many of your customers will appreciate an email that includes a coupon code or promo offer.

Obviously the best-case scenario for these emails is to segment your list based on customers shopping experience and history. You can send out personalized emails with special offers depending on the customers’ demographics or loyalty or status as repeat customer.

One good way is to load up plenty of emails to launch over the next month with the help of an autoresponder. It’s easy to share coupon codes with prospects and customers via email too.

4. Up sell, cross sell, and suggest some more

The largest online retailer in the world, Amazon.com, has proven the power of online suggestive selling. “People who purchased this item also purchased…” It’s extraordinarily powerful and can improve sales figures immediately. Including the suggestive selling features again at the end of the sales process, after your shopper has committed to the larger sale, is truly simple and ingenious. As a shopper, I already have my credit card in hand, I’ve already committed to the sale. Now: “Would you like fries with that?”

5. Offer incentives such as free shipping

Sometimes it’s helpful to be reminded of the macro business view; in this case, to keep in mind why so many people are shopping online. What are the driving factors? Simplicity and savings are high on the list. Online browsing is the ideal scenario for frugal shoppers, to perform quick price-comparisons.

According to the 2008 eHoliday Study, conducted by Shopzilla, 80 percent of online retailers are offering free shipping this holiday season, usually connected to some sort of disclaimer. This might be a minimum purchase order or a sale deadline.

Whether or not you provide free shipping, be sure your fulfillment and shipping information is clear, concise, and user-friendly. Provide price comparisons for different delivery options and provide tracking numbers.

6. Showcase community connections

There are a handful of social shopping sites like Etsy  and Kaboodle that have proven the trend. People like to reach for their wallets, especially when encouraged to do so by like-minded individuals or online friends. It just feels better when you know someone else took the plunge and they are using the product.

A quote from Time Magazine online: “In fact, brands are noticing that online communities have more buying persuasion power than store sales clerks. And they're forming more partnerships with social sites now that traffic numbers are at an all-time high. In October 2007, Kaboodle had nearly 3 million unique monthly visitors. By October 2008, it tripled that number to 10.8 million and also logged its highest numbers for revenue, traffic and registered users.”

Keeping this in mind, it can be extraordinarily effective to inject some of that Web 2.0 community flavor into the shopping experience of your site. Some ideas: include customer reviews; allow commenting and rating of products; showcase a customer service pro as a personal connection in case of shopping questions or concerns; create a members’ only section with special discounts or other valuable offers.

7. Increase ad promos and the presence of gift giving, gift cards, and good deals

As mentioned above, regarding the macro-view: why are people turning to the Internet in droves for shopping? It begins with hunting for gift ideas and ends with finding bargains. While everyone wants to save money on gas this year in particle in the U.S., we all want to avoid the long shopping lines, the stress of frantic shoppers, the parking problems, the crowded stores, and so on.

With the increase of Web traffic and folks on search engines, this is a good time to consider increasing your online ad budget. It’s always a challenge for marketing decisions, to find the right mix and balance.

Many online retailers are feeling the crunch, cutting inventories and staff to reduce costs. Nonetheless, attracting folks to your store and then retaining them with gift cards and great offers is a surefire method for ROI.

Final thoughts

Of course it’s easy to throw out numerous suggestions with a simple looking holiday wish list. It’s quite another thing to implement all these changes quickly and efficiently in time for your holiday shoppers. If you own and use SkyCart! Shopping Cart and Quebert, Our Email Marketer, many of these suggestions are quick and simple to initiate. I hope they work for you.

Happy Holidays!