How to Get Away With Email

The thing about murder is that it's hard to get away with it. You have to discredit witnesses, provide reasonable doubt, and make evidence disappear. It's messy. Kind of like email. But email doesn't have to be messy. It doesn't have to be a black hole where sales leads and marketing promotions go to die. It's much easier to get away with email than with murder, you just have to understand the basics.

Remember when you used to dial into your AOL or Earthlink account and your email inbox was empty? The only thing waiting for you each day was a personal email from your internet pen-pal or maybe your best friend.

No? You don't? Yea. Neither do I. Because that time never existed.

Since the dawn of email, inboxes have been cluttered. Obnoxious companies (and scammers) jumped right on the email bandwagon at the start of Al Gore's internet and were ready to bombard unsuspecting users with ads, completely real girls just looking for a friend, and erectile dysfunction pills. With that kind of spam from day one, it's a wonder anyone stuck with email to the robust tool it is today. But here we are, email aficionados. Any company worth it's weight in gold understands the importance of email, and how integral it is to success and growth.

Understanding the importance of email and understanding how to get those emails read, however, are two completely different ideas. Just because you know you should be sending emails doesn't mean you know how to send them in way that encourages recipient reading and responses. While it may sounds as easy as "just send an email" when you think your product speaks for yourself, it isn't and it doesn't. Let's break it down into a couple of tips across three key components.