We often get asked, “How can I make sure my e-blast is read by my clients or customers?” Clients want to make sure that in the myriad of emails that litter our inboxes each day, theirs isn’t the one that’s deleted instantaneously. While inboxes these days are a cluttered world, you can take some steps to make sure yours isn’t immediately launched into the proverbial trash bin.

• First, respect your reader and don’t waste their time. Your customers aren’t sitting around waiting for your email to arrive. So when it does, make sure you get to the point – quickly. Tell your clients and customers what you want them to know, right away.

• Always ask permission. Not everyone wants to receive your latest news or product information. So make sure you ask your readers if they’d like to receive your updates. If you show them a sample of what they’ll get along with information about how often they’ll get it, even better.

• Keep your goals in focus. Sit down and come up with an answer to the following: “What is the one thing you want people to do when they get this email?” Designing with a myriad of 5 or more goals is hard, but 1 or 2 are much more attainable. This also helps you measure your success.

• Don’t bury your unsubscribe link! Disclaimers are the prose of lawyers, but we have to abide by them. If people are not interested in your content anymore, there’s no point in continuing to email them. So make unsubscribing easy, and if your readers decide to come back one day, they’ll know exactly how to do so.

• No fancy coding allowed. While CSS and HTML render wonderfully on the Internet, it isn’t so for email clients. So code like it’s 1998, and use inline CSS. You’ll be glad you did.

•  Images aren’t always viewed. Those using Outlook or Gmail will often need to click to show your images. No matter how beautiful and engaging your images are, if they can’t be seen, you won’t convey your message. The solution? Make sure your email  has HTML text as well as plain text, so you don’t alienate anyone.

• Test, test, test. And test again. Make sure you test your email on a variety of clients. Doing so will help you see the potential pitfalls and help you remedy any problems. After all, once you hit send, you can’t take it back!