Valentine’s Day this week has put relationships front-of-mind for many people. Email marketers are no exception, says Paul Bates (pictured below), who has tips for following simple best practice procedures to help avoid common mistakes and ensure subscribers fall back in love with email marketing this year.

Tip Number 1

"Think about your customers as people first and purchasers second. In other words, think about all the unwanted emails you received this morning, what annoyed you about them and then check that the emails you’re preparing don’t have the same annoying attributes.

Tip Number 2

"Ask yourself is whether you have direct control over your email marketing strategy. You’ll have worked hard and invested a lot of time and energy in building your company’s brand and all that work can be destroyed by a badly conceived and executed email campaign. This is more likely to happen if you put your valued brand and trusted data in someone else’s hands.

Tip Number 3

"Think about the frequency of your campaigns – get the balance right and don’t bug your customers. A good email-based relationship is based on trust, consistency and the delivery of high-value content. For example – don’t keep changing sender addresses for each campaign. If recipients add it to their safe senders list, and then you change it for the next campaign, your next email is more likely to end up in their junk mail folder.

Bates adds: "It sounds simple, but I am still amazed by the number of email marketers who ignore these basic steps. If you ensure that your company takes the time to understand its subscribers and the type of content they want to receive, it may be the difference between a red rose and a broken heart from your Valentine!"

Paul Bates is managing director, StrongMail UK.