Subject line and from line tune-up.  Marketers find longer subject lines are more effective because they give room tell a more compelling story.  But many e-mail clients (the software a recipient uses to view emails) dramatically limit the display.  For example, AOL 8.0 will only display 15 to 16 characters of your from line and 51 characters of your subject line.  Deployment vendor Email Labs has a free tool that allows you to preview how your subject and from lines will display in a many of the most popular e-mail clients.  


HTML tester.  Studies have found that anywhere between 20 percent to 40 percent of e-mails don’t render properly.  Poor HTML coding can result in display problems and a bad user experience.  Of course, this has an impact on response rates and may tarnish your brand.   It can also affect your delivery rates, since some content filters check header information as well as the HTML code.  

The World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) has developed guidelines and standards for the Web.  Its site is a hub for information.  There is a separate site that allows you to check HTML and XHTML documents for conformance to W3C recommendations and other standards.  


Simplify your links.   Text messages can present a problem when you want recipients to link deep within your site.  URLs can be quite long and the display may even break a link into two lines.  Recipients may need to cut and paste the link components to get to your site.  

There are free services that will take your long URL and create a smaller URL that will not break in email messages and will never expire.  The services work through link redirects; the user clicks on the short link and is immediately re-directed to the appropriate page.  You can find one such service here.  


Writing for comprehension.  Make sure your e-mails are easy to comprehend, your copy is written in the active voice, and your sentences average between 10 and 12 words.  

A tool available in Microsoft Word will give you a snapshot of all this, and more.  To find and install it select “tools” from your drop down menu, then choose “spelling and grammar,” “options,” and check the box next to “show readability statistics.”  After you spell check a document, you’ll automatically receive a readability report.  


Receive spam complaints.   Many ISPs encourage their members to use their “report as spam” capability instead of the opt-out links in e-mail messages.  When this happens, you may not be aware that these recipients have complained.   To make certain you’re fully aware of any such complaints, the Internet Engineering Task Force recommends you first make sure  your abuse and postmaster addresses are valid and can receive e-mail.  Any Web site should have these types of working e-mail addresses where people can report e-mail abuse problems associated with that site.  Then, register these addresses with abuse.net, a clearinghouse that compiles a master database of reporting addresses for users throughout the Web to use.  

A few ISPs will allow you to register and then receive copies of all spam complaints.  For AOL, click here and to be white-listed with Juno and NetZero click here.  


Spam-proof your messages.  One of the more popular antispam applications available today is the SpamAssassin™ spam identification tool.  It includes several hundred filters and allows mail administrators (at some ISPs and in corporations) to customize their threshold for spam.  Depending on how your newsletter is written, your opt-in e-mail may be inadvertently flagged as spam.  It is worthwhile to review all the SpamAssassin spam rules; although I suggest you also have an IT person look at them with you since they are fairly complex.