1. Don’t waste a word. Hook them with the subject line, be clear, concise, and unique – pique curiosity without misleading. One chance to make a first impression and all that.

2. Know your audience. Know each audience in fact, their pain points, preferred style, segment according to interest – it’s all there to be learned and worked on.

3. Content of value before CTA. Build trust, offer insights and answer questions – earn your click on the Call to Action, what’s in it for them?

4. Clean your data. No dead people, no ‘they left 5 years ago’ – none of that. It’s lazy, disrepectful and screws up your metrics.

5. Stay regular. A series is just that – don’t start a monthly newsletter without planning out the next 3. By all means, start quarterly and bring it in if the audience shows interest and you have the content.

6. Think F shaped. Respect the structure and format, use preview pane text to your advantage. A big header image might look lovely to you but is it a waste of top fold space? Deploy summary paragraphs and teaser links to full content pieces, blogs, videos. A useful reminder here about ‘F’ shaped scanning / reading.

7. Experiment & test. Be curious, try to do it better. Deploy A/B test subject lines, change and move calls to action, try different content formats to identify the most effective approaches, but don’t change too much in one go.

8. Don’t be spammy. This isn’t 2002. Do as you would be done by. Check your opt-in mechanism, use legitimate data sources, be clear and transparent and respect unsubscribes. If you build organic opt-ins from web page forms, make sure you send them something!

9. Speak their language: Choose a voice, whether chatty or more formal to fit your brand, and use appropriate levels of jargon / complexity. Set a tone that can explain more technical matters without being condescending.

10. Be nerdy. Analyse open rates, click-through rates, and other metrics, CTAs and actual submissions; what you can learn can improve the next communication’s results.

[Ok, it’s 12 but you’re still here 😊 ]

11. Integrate for journey tracking on the website – did they bounce or stay and read content, where did they go next? Continuously optimise your campaigns for better engagement.

12. Automate the customer journey: play around with your email tool to see how to trigger personalised responses, follow-up sequences, and nurture leads efficiently. Don’t stop at one, build a conversation of value.