Most messages sent by email marketers seek to entice recipients to click on a link, and increasing click rates is one of the most common goals of our Strategic engagements. There are many factors that can affect click rates, but in this article we'll focus on the links themselves and some tactics to employ--and avoid

I have an explanation for why people click the spam button on so-called "legitimate" email: the "Forgot I Signed Up for Email" (FISUE) Syndrome.

This often happens when people sign up for Webinars, free trials or buy something online. They either forgot they signed up or didn't realize that being added to your regular email program came with their transaction. You must make a clear case to your subscribers that your email is in their inboxes at their invitation. If not, FISUE Syndrome will claim another victim.

Tweets. Pokes. Tags. It's as if anything that reads more than 140 characters in length (spaces included) these days is deemed Tolstoyesque. (This opening line comes in at 139, btw.)

We're living in a time when microscopic attention spans are the norm. And the need for bold, meaningful email headers has never been more important for engaging your recipient base. So don't let your header be a last-minute design consideration.

Sooner or later, you will send out an email message with an obvious mistake in it. It's embarrassing, but making the mistake is not the real problem. What is? Not correcting it or learning from it, thus possibly repeating it or not turning it into a positive.