You’ve surely had the experience of waking up to an email inbox filled to the brim with spam. What you might consider spam is often email marketing gone awry: a waste of time for you and the person who is sending out the emails! If you would like to try an email marketing campaign (and there’s no reason not to!), you do need to keep a few caveats in mind to avoid pitfalls, which range from annoying your subscribers, to getting booted from your email service provider for spamming. Here are my top ten tips for creating a successful email marketing campaign, in no particular order:

1. Prepare your audience. Basically, if someone does not want your email, it’s spam, plain and simple. Don’t try to trick anybody into giving you an email address! When you ask your readers to fill out a form, let them know what you are going to use the email address for. Specify whether your emails come out once per month or three times per day. Allow people to opt out before they opt in in the first place by being honest and upfront with them.

2. Use the double opt-in method. This means that a reader enters his email address on your site, then must click on an emailed link to confirm. Yes, it takes up an additional 10 seconds of his time, but it also prevents people from signing up their friends (or enemies) to receive spam.

3. Be professional. Use the same logo, signature and style on all of your email correspondence. Use basic fonts and effective color schemes. Think of your emails as an extension of your website or brick-and-mortar business, and design them accordingly.

4. Be relevant. Don’t email if you have nothing relevant to say. Keep your emails on topic, and make them timely: consider the season and the current trends in your business, and give your readers content that they can use now.

5. Be brief. A few paragraphs or a list of bullet points are probably all that your readers have time for. If your content needs to be more lengthy, split it up into more than one email, or provide a summary along with a link that your readers can click if they want more information.

6. Provide a prominent “unsubscribe” button or form. Don’t irritate people by making it a several-step process or, worse, by not including an opt-out form on every email.

7. Cater to your clients’ capabilities. Provide the option for them to receive their emails in plain text or HTML form. Another option is to utilize Multipart, which will allow those who can open HTML emails to view them that way, and will convert to plain-text when sending to devices that don’t support HTML.

8. Reassess your readers’ commitment after a period of time. Every six months or every year, ask your email recipients to click on a new “subscribe” button. Send the request more than once to those who don’t answer the first time.

9. Use other forms of social media, as well. Encourage your email recipients and readers to follow you on Twitter, like you on Facebook, and otherwise interact with you on social media sites. Being active in social media is a necessary part of marketing yourself in 2012, so don’t limit yourself to email interactions!

10. Take your readers’ suggestions seriously. Provide a space to list a reason on the “unsubscribe” form, and carefully consider every reason given. Periodically send out a survey about whether your emails are useful, and ask your readers what they’d like to read more about. Put up a poll on your Facebook page. In other words, ask for input, consider all comments, and make changes as necessary.

An email campaign may be just what your business needs, in addition to excellent search engine optimization and a strong social media presence. See maximum growth this year by taking every advantage of the technology available to you!