Targeted email marketing is seen as the safe way of going about our business but it is not. Safe is a misnomer: it is anything but. If you do not take risks then you are risking your company. 

Any Google search using the words high street and closures will bring in hundreds of results. It is predicted by many that next year will be even worse than 2012, something many felt impossible, with the proportion of empty shops increasing. In some ways this is good news for all online sales. Comet goes and something has to fill the vacuum. However it might not be as rarefied as we hoped.

Despite the rumours, these high street chains are probably closing more because of the lack of money around rather than the high cost of parking and traffic problems. It is suggested that there will not be a massive increase in online sales over and above the normal from the past few years.

All your competitors will be out there after these few extra sales and you need to be in there fighting for them. Being safe is not an option. You need to do something extra and probably extra special to stand a chance of gaining your fair share and more.

Targeted email marketing is not just about picking those whom you know will be interested in your product. You need to extend the margins, not by much, but enough to make that vital difference between you and your competitors.

Prepare a list as normal, including those you believe will have some interest in the email, but excluding the ones who would be better targeted by another offer coming out in the future. However, with any selection procedure there will be those who are very similar but on either side of the cut.

The trick is to include a proportion of those whom you had excluded in a list of their own. Not many, just the ones who are literally border-line. The returns will tell you if it was a worthwhile experiment. Even if the answer is no, you will have more information than when you started.