E-mails campaigns are a great way to build brand awareness and client and prospect relationships. Plus, if you include promotional content in the correct manner (don’t oversell 24/7), they will also increase leads and therefore revenue. Here are five simple e-mail marketing tips you can use to make sure your emails have a greater chance of getting opened, read, and acted upon.

1. Create Relevant Subject Lines

Most people check their in-boxes multiple times throughout the day. And far too often there is just too much e-mail and too little time to respond, much less open and read all of the messages. That’s why it’s vital for your e-mails to have a Subject Line that makes people want to open and read the message. People are looking for any excuse to delete your e-mail-don’t give it to them. Using a Subject Line Like “A Special Announcement From weBranding” is a waste. This Subject Line does nothing to explain to your subscribers what to expect if they take some of their limited time to open the e-mail. Instead, use a Subject Line that engages your reader’s attention and sets a specific expectation of what benefit they’ll receive if they open the message.

2. Use HTML With Text Backup

While text-only e-mails were a common practice just a few years ago, times have changed, and most people do prefer to receive their emails in an HTML format. For the handful of recipients that cannot read email in an HTML format, a text-based backup is highly recommended.

3. Length and Frequency of Your E-mail

The more frequent your e-mail communications, the shorter they should be. People will usually not have a problem opening a short e-mail they can scan in a few second; but almost no one wants to paragraph after paragraph on a weekly basis. Also, never, never write longer copy just for the sake of it. If you can say it in a paragraph, then do it.

4. Make it Easy on the Eyes

Well designed, or visually appealing e-mails are not only opened more often, people spend more time reading them.

5. Tone & Attitude

Many firms with their paper-based communications tend to take a very formal approach. And of course, being professional is vital in business communications. But e-mail marketing is different. The best e-mail professionals, no matter what industry they are in—from consumer-focused sites to serious business-to-business firms—all say the same thing: make the tone of your e-mails personal and casual. Let’s face it; people crave a little humanity and interaction to break up their high-paced, stressful days. They like-even respect-a little more personal style of communication that sounds as if it is written by a human and not a robot. Now we know, depending on your corporate environment, that it may be hard to get used to writing in a casual tone. It can feel risky, even scary at first. But chances are it will work far better than old-fashioned “corporate-speak.” And of course you can test to see if we’re wrong (I’m not).

Conclusion

I often hear, “I don’t know what a well-designed email looks like.” I often say, “you’ll know it when you see it.” But of course, that isn’t the best response (even if accurate). So always remember your best resource is your own in-box. In the next couple days take a few hours and sign-up to receive emails from a number of different types of firms (never forget your competition). Create a folder in your mail application and as they arrive, save them for future review. Then spend some time looking at all the messages. Find ideas you can use. See what makes you open e-mail (or delete them unread). What are some creative Subject Lines? How do they format their text? What tone do they use in the copy, and how do they use landing pages? You’ll be surprised by all the new ideas you’ll end up generating.