Most email marketers pouring money and databases down the drain

Yes, we are in recession. Yes, it will get worse, and yes, more companies are turning to email to market their way out of it.

Is it working?

Well, based on the stuff that hits my inbox, probably not for most of them.

There is still a fundamental lack of understanding amongst many so called email marketers about how best to use the medium. Email advertising doesn't work per se, yet it remains the staple format of what is being sent out.

To make email work as a marketing medium, there are some golden rules that need to be applied:

1. Email is a unique medium that offers a uniquely direct and personal form of communication - so make your offers unique to email - show the value in communicating by email.

2. Be clear about what you want recipients to do, and how to do it. Drowning a sales message in a whirlpool of unnecessary marketing fluff simply disguises your message.

3. Limited offers in limited numbers is a formula that works. Few people will buy all 20 of your special offers in one go, but if they are only offered 2, they might buy one, which leaves 18 more to make similar impact over the next 9 weeks.

4. Most companies use marketing to sell what they want to sell, but you must remember to give buyers reasons to buy. Demand comes from a number of factors - need, availability, price - underline these so a buying decision is an easy one. Emails that simply say here are our cheap offerings this week are treated as companies trying to shift the unsellable.

Understanding the basic principles of email marketing is not rocket science. Getting them right does require a little more thought and intuition, but ignoring them is simply wasting time and money, and right now that seems to be what the majority are doing. What a shame.