• by Kara Trivunovic , Op-Ed Contributor, February 18, 2010

I've been doing a good bit of travel lately, and I often struggle with the age-old battle of how to spend one's time on a plane: do I catch up on email, or thumb through the current Us Weekly? I admit it, Us Weekly often wins out.

C'mon, admit it -- you read it too! I always like to read through the celebrity "25 Things You Don't Know About Me," born from the famed Facebook exercise. So as I was reading the most recent one about Dr. Mehmet Oz (#4 - his favorite veggie is okra), it dawned on me that it would be fun to play this game with email.  So here is my list:

1.  Strategy and deliverability are not separate parts of the business; they very much impact one another.

2.  Your recipients don't innately know that donotrespond@company.com doesn't accept responses.

3.  And even if they did, they don't care. Email is a two-way communication vehicle.

4.  You should encourage recipients to respond to your email; some of the most honest insight can be gained here.

5.  Yes, that means you should actually have someone monitor that box.

6.  Best time of day to send email is like the chupacabra: it doesn't really exist, but people keep looking for it.

7.  If you weren't certain, blast is the dirtiest email word a marketer can utter.

8.  And yes, you lose credibility points the minute it passes your lips.

9.  Email and direct mail are not that different in methodology and approach - just time to market.

10.    You can and should attribute revenue or value to your email efforts.

11.    Your email database is an asset and should be valued as such.

12.   If you don't know the value of an email address to your organization, you cannot effectively communicate your program's impact.

13.   Your CMO doesn't care that you have a 98% delivery rate, (s)he wants to know what it means to the business.

14.   You really should be conducting some kind of test for every email message you send out.

15.    What your email recipients say and what they actually do are two very different things.

16.   Setting proper and honest expectations at the point of subscription builds better email relationships.

17.   Your email unsubscribe should be one-click and shouldn't be hidden. If people want out, they'll find it (or complain -- you choose).

18.  Your email needs to be pretty AND have good content -- fixing your template doesn't undo all your email woes, and vice versa.

19.  Recipients will find ways to control your messages whether you make it easy for them or not -- so be a good email marketer and let 'em manage preferences.

20.  Introduce program changes prior to rolling out the revision - unless it's a test, of course.

21.  Email program success should be determined by more than just your open and click data. Doing so may require a little work,  but it should be worth every minute.

22.  The "one message for all" approach is not relevant for "all."  Really, seriously, it isn't.  

23.  Just like a friendly store greeter welcomes you to your favorite store, you should welcome your subscribers to your email program.

24.   Email is a relationship channel and has always been an effective retention tool -- that is its strength.

25.   Properly including social elements in your email campaigns can exponentially increase your reach.

This email version wasn't nearly as exciting as fun tidbits like, "I ate pizza morning, noon and night when I was pregnant with my first child," but these 25 items should certainly give you some pause to verify that you in fact DID know them, and that they are properly reflected in your email program.