Tips on striking the right balance for email marketing?

Asha, I don't know how sophisticated you are able to be with your program, but at some point you'll want to target your subscribers based on behavior (clicked a specific category link in an email, purchased a certain product), data (birthdate, gender, etc) or preferences (teen vs baby clothes, etc.)

So you might have the subject line tailored to specific segments and keyed to the main products. Use your past purchase data to help you determine which new products to focus on in the emails.

Do you have a preference center? If you sell different types of items that can be put into logical categories, then offer those categories during the opt-in process and then create emails focused just on those segments when appropriate products arrive.

On the content side...as a chain of boutiques, you probably have lots of repeat customers and "personality" to your stores. Incorporate that personality, the customer service as well as customer quotes, testimonials and tips into your emails. You want your emails to create value for your subscribers - beyond just this week's sale.

Morgan hit the nail on the head with her comments. My only advice is to experiment and then track your changes and what effects they had on your open-rates, conversions, etc.

Simple things like changing the subject line or from fields can dramatically affect your numbers. The key is to keep tracking your results and finding that "sweet" spot that works best for you.

Asha, testing the number of products highlighted in your emails is definitely the key. Sometimes an email focused on one great new product with some strong details will be very successful. Other times you'll need to be a little creative with how your promote products.

For instance, when promoting a new product that you just got in, highlight:
- complementary products or accessories to use with it;
- other products made by that manufacturer; or
- products that are similar.

Some research has shown that 10+ links in an email is optimal so trying out different ways to pump up the number of links in your emails.

I would highly recommend subscribing to Sephora's emails. They do a great job of coming up with creative themes under which to promote products.

Hope that helps.

All great answers and good advice. In general, I would lean on the side of less content and then test addding more and less. The goal of the email is simply to have the recipient click to the landing or web page. The other part of this equation is relevance. If you can, I would strongly suggest investing in tools that allow you to send the right products.

/mm/

Hard to say. A lot depends on the layout, purpose of the e-mail, the audience, etc. Statistically users start getting lost if there are more than seven pieces they have to deal with in the visible screen area, but that's highly subjective in my opinion. I am a strong beleiver that e-mail is a message not a web page one can effectively browse. So, my advice, for what it's worth - make e-mail as simple as possible with dominant call to action and include the link to the landing page. Test, test, test. Subject line and who the e-mail is coming from are vital.

I dealt with a similar issue in the past. I would ask yourself not how much content should be in the email but how much time do you want your customers spending on the email? Ultimately, you want the email to be a vehicle that delivers your customers to your website to browse more product and make a purchase.

In my experience, there are really two key things to think about since you have limited space and time to compel the customer to visit your website:

1) Relevant Content Are you delivering content that is important to the customer? You can use past buying behavior and/or demographic data as a start to selecting relevant content.

2) Clear Call-to-Action Make sure you are telling the customer exactly what you want them to do and where you want them to go. i.e. If you are promoting a particular product group, make sure you have a prominent, above the fold "shop now" type button that leads to a landing page with that product.

Ultimately emails that are too content-centric rather than customer-centric either overwhelm or underwhelm the customer and may even prevent the customer from visiting the website.

If the only thing you send out are items you sell, then 1 product is too much.

Content is still king.

Look at your ezine as your best sales tool. What can you teach your audiance? You dont' have to write to add articles or tips to your ezine (although I'm sure you can). Use an article bank and give proper credit http://www.ArticleBanks.com

It's not about how many items you can fit in an ezine -- what you want to do is to use your ezine to get people to click and go to your website where they can buy lots of stuff :)