Email marketing is difficult to nail down. No system is forever. It might not even last a week. You need to modify your procedures to cope with the constant changes. Or better still, anticipate them. What this means is that everything you know now is or will be wrong.

One way to cope is to change the way you think and act. There are just the two rules. They might seem contradictory at first but give it a run.

Accept the statistics.

Be sceptical of everything.

The returns you get with your email marketing software do not lie. If they say that your latest idea, the one that took all that time to develop, does not work then it does not work, regardless of how clever everyone says you are.

The subscribers to your email list are the final arbiters. If they do not buy then it does not matter if the design won an award.

In the same way do not accept accepted wisdom. For instance, if you have studied anything in email marketing you will know that personalisation is good. For top ROI you should address each customer with a friendly name check. It makes them feel wanted.

Should is a big word.

Here’s where a strength of email marketing comes in. Try a little experiment. There will be those on your email list who are not responding as they used to. Something you are doing is wrong. Why not be more formal with them? Perhaps a change to a more professional approach could work.

The same goes for the best day to send the email. Everyone knows that Monday morning is bad because inboxes are as full as diaries. What this actually means is everyone else is avoiding sending their emails on that day.

The only way for you to find out if you are missing an opportunity is to give it a go.

Constant change means that you will never crack email marketing. Whilst this might seem a bit of a downer, no one else will either. You have the opportunity to challenge those above you merely by changing the way you think. Forever.