Best Practice

• HOW TO: Use marketing emails to trigger viral conversation

  Email marketing can be used to enhance your social media activity and vice-versa. Luke Grffiths, VP professional services at E-Dialog International reveals what B2B marketers should be thinking about when putting an email campaign together

• HOW TO: Choose the right B2B agency

  Using examples from both agency and client sides, Julie Constable, head of agency selector at the MCCA, outlines the simple steps businesses need to take when choosing a B2B agency

• HOW TO: Get personal with email

  Getting a positive email response can rest entirely on perceptions of the sender before content even comes in to play, reveals Denise Cox, newsletter specialist at Newsweaver

• HOW TO: Reach your email targeted success rates

  Concep has picked out the key areas they recommend you start building into your communication strategy to help you to maximise your email marketing success rates specifically for 2010

• BEST PRACTICE: Get trigger happy

  Trigger email campaigns are being increasingly touted as the clever email marketer's tool, ready to cut through inbox clutter and give the customer what they want, when they want it. Claire Weekes reports

• HOW TO: Calculate the cost of an email campaign

  Companies have embraced the misconception that email is virtually "free" but this false impression often leads to over-communication, diminishing response rates, spam complaints, and unsubscribes.

• HOW TO: Plan your B2B email marketing campaigns

  The first step towards successful B2B email marketing is planning and budgeting.  A little time spent devising a strategy now, says Infogroup/UK general manager Richard Lloyd, will pay dividends in the future

• HOW TO: Build your B2B email marketing campaign

  Once you have the firm foundations of a strategy and budget in place for your email marketing activity, it's time to build your campaign. This is where all your hard work comes to fruition. Get the design and content right to ensure you get the right results.

• BEST PRACTICE: Integrated marketing

  Effective integrated marketing is more complex than simply sending DM and email with the same tagline, says Brett Mathews

• HOW TO: Use email marketing to profile your customers

  However email marketing offers a cost-effective, accurate and non-intrusive way of conducting customer research says Marc Munier, commercial director at Pure360.

• BEST PRACTICE: The importance of email testing

  How important is it to test your email approach before embarking on a campaign? Critical, according to Ruaraidh Thomas, managing director of Data Lateral and Shift Click

• HOW TO: Target your email

  Outflanking your competitors requires you to use email to do more than simply push messages; it has to be the spark that generates a relationship.

• HOW TO: Create an effective email campaign

  You need to plan each step of your activity to develop an effective email campaign.

• HOW TO: Measure email marketing and understand metrics

  Businesses that really understand email marketing know that the key differentiator is the ability to track, measure and tweak.

• HOW TO: Tackle image blocking

  "Right click here to download pictures. To protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download of this picture from the internet". What does this mean from a marketing perspective?

• BEST PRACTICE: Enabling the email revolution

  Choosing the right email marketing platform or service provider is likely to be a critical decision for any B2B brand, given the increasing importance of email as a business marketing channel. Dave Howell examines the options available, and suggests some factors for consideration

• HOW TO: Make sure your email arrives

  There's no point in embarking on an email marketing campaign unless you're sure your message is going to arrive where it should.

• HOW TO: Make sure your email is read

  Your message has arrived. It's in the inbox, but where does it go next? Straight to trash, or into the mind of the recipient?

• DIGITAL MASTERCLASS: Going viral

  Viral – that bastion of disruptive marketing – is proving a worthwhile investment not just for mass-market B2C brands, but in the B2B market space too. Natalie Horne, planner at specialist viral division of Mason Zimbler, Rebel Virals, shares ten tips on how to do it right.

• BEST PRACTICE: Opt-out strategies to entice readers to stay

  Newsletter specialist Denise Cox shares tips on how to prevent your readers from unsubscribing.

• BEST PRACTICE: Top tips for email marketing in a recession

  James Bunting, director of strategy and research at The Communicator Corporation, shares tactics on how to make the most of email marketing during a recession.

• BEST PRACTICE: Five tips to triumph in the mobile revolution

  Kath Pay, MD of Ezemail and member of the DMA email marketing council, shows how to get ahead of competition in getting mobile email marketing off the ground

• BEST PRACTICE: Ten things to check before you hit send

  You've spent time designing the template for your latest email campaign, creating sizzling content and testing your offers and subject line. You're ready to hit the send button. But wait! Take time to check these ten things before hitting send, says Denise Cox, newsletter specialist at Newsweaver and member of the Direct Marketing Association's Email Marketing Council

• HOW TO: get more email subscribers

  Your email subscribe box is one of the most important elements in building a permission-based opt-in database. Making sure it is highly visible on your website and in your emails will also help you capture new subscribers through visitors to your website and any viral marketing. Denise Cox, newsletter specialist at Newsweaver, explains how to ensure your sign-up form attracts subscribers

• HOW TO: Integrate email with other channels

  With the dark clouds of a recession increasingly looming, businesses are beginning to feel the pinch. With all eyes turning to maximising ROI, email marketers are asking themselves more than ever how they can improve their campaign effectiveness. The answer is integration, says Ray Welsh

• HOW TO: Increase email deliverability

  In the first of a series of masterclasses on digital marketing, Mike Weston, MD of Silverpop, gives the lowdown on email deliverability and how to ensure your message reaches its destination

• HOW TO: Tackle image blockers

  As office inboxes become increasingly cluttered, more and more email users use preview panes, complete with image blockers, to view their messages. For the marketer, this can turn a carefully crafted campaign into little more than a page littered with little red crosses. But there are ways to avoid this. Ed Weatherall, MD of Concep, shares his top tips

• BEST PRACTICE: The golden rules of B2B email marketing

  Bill Marjot, director of operations at The Planet Group, presents a five step guide to getting the most out of your B2B email marketing campaigns

• BEST PRACTICE: Creating useful benchmarks for email marketers

  R.J. Talyor, email strategist with integrated software provider ExactTarget, offers tips on how to drive accurate analysis of marketing campaigns

• BEST PRACTICE: Make your email marketing campaign more effective

  Julian Scott, creative director of Responsys, presents 11 easy steps for making B2B email marketing more effective

• HOW TO: Avoid the trash

  Claire Weekes presents a seven-step guide on ensuring your email campaign doesn't end up in the trash can

• BEST PRACTICE: Start spreading the e-news

  E-newsletters are a cost-effective and creative way of keeping a business front-of-mind, but how do you get them right? Zubeir Mukri, sales & marketing director of Kinexus Internet, has 20 helpful tips for perfect e-newsletter design

• BEST PRACTICE: Before you send...

  Email marketing has been embraced by a generation of B2B marketers but many are making fundamental errors. Paul Coleman outlines the basic steps towards effective email marketing

• HOW TO: Ban spam

  Steve King of Xpedite Systems offers seven golden rules for B2B email marketers worried about being labelled as spammers

• HOW TO: Ensure HTML design best practice for your emails

  Follow these simple rules from Concep and you should spare yourself (and your designers) the pain of simply trying to ‘make things work', allowing you to concentrate on the important things like building your bottom line.