So, you want to be the next email marketing Superman or Wonder Woman? It'll take more than the biggest mailing list in your market space, the best offers or email list software so powerful it enables you to flood your subscribers' inboxes as soon as you hit "send".

With great power comes great responsibility and great dangers. Your path is littered with digital kryptonite, which can cripple your operations and turn you into Lex Luthor in a single campaign. To keep away from the dark side of email marketing, just follow these five rules:

1. Understand email is not direct marketing

The rules are different for email marketing because it's so much more personal than paper mail, TV or print ads. If someone receives an unsolicited catalog and complains about it, that complaint won't result in mail carriers dumping all catalogs destined for Metropolis. But send an unwanted email, and all of a sudden AOL, Hotmail and Yahoo! will go dark, at least as far as your results are concerned.

Everything flows from that most basic concept: where and how you acquire names for your email list, what you send, how often, how you treat subscribers. If you don't get that from the start, you may as well reveal your secret identity and turn in your boots and cape right now.

2. Guard your data with your life

Your email database is your most precious commodity. Protect it from hackers, thieves and exploiters, both inside the company walls and outside. Keep track of who in your organization has access, and how easy it is for someone else to gain it.

When someone quits or gets fired, how fast do you disable his access? How often do you change your password? Or, do you use your dog's name for all your passwords, and everybody in the office knows it? Let someone log in as you, and you may be left catching the blame for their nefarious deeds.

If your database is as good as you think it is -- full of up-to-date, engaged customers who respond vigorously to your messages -- then a lot of people are going to want to get their hands on it, legitimately or otherwise.

Even more insidiously, do you hand over your data to the highest rental bidder? Third-party deals are fine, but you should always grab the content and send it to your own email list instead of turning your list over to your potential partner.

3. Write a privacy policy, and then, stick to it

Don't let your legal department write it, either. Sure, most people won't read it. But, a good, clear privacy policy becomes your internal guide for handling the data your customers have entrusted to you. You need to have one anyway if you decide to go for third-party certification as a trusted sender. If you don't have a privacy policy or if your privacy policy dates from the days of Wite-Out, check those of organizations you trust and who have handled your email and other personal information ethically. Once you hammer out your policy, let your email subscribers know you have it: link to it at every customer touchpoint, especially on your website's registration page and in your confirmation and welcome messages.

4. Honor recipient preferences

Batman might not have to follow orders, but email marketing superheroes do. That means when someone tells you she's interested in learning more about shoes, don't send her email messages about purses, hats and hair dryers.

Can you send offers about hosiery? Better not. Shoes and stockings are related, but maybe your recipient lives in a tropical climate where nobody wears socks. This is why you need to have a good, detailed and relevant preference page, so your subscribers can pinpoint their preferences early in their relationship with you and thus leave no room for doubt or second-guessing.

Beyond content preferences, let your customers tell you when and how often they want to receive email marketing, the format and whether they want you to share their names with other mailers. Emailing too often, or not enough, is as bad as sending all the wrong offers.

5. If they want to leave, set them free

Your super powers are helpless against CAN-SPAM, the U.S. commercial email law that says you have to include a working unsubscribe link in every email message. If you live in another country, you probably have a similar law making you honor unsubscribes promptly.

Besides, not every unsubscribe means a permanent good-bye. Someone could be changing addresses. Every email message you send, including transactional email messages such as order confirmations and subscription acknowledgements, should specify how to update preferences or change addresses.

These five rules might make you think it's next to impossible to become an email marketing superhero. But really, they're all just based on common sense and respect for your subscribers. And when it comes to developing good relations with your customers, those are all the superpowers you really need.

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About the Author

Wendy Roth is senior manager of training services for Lyris. She works closely with marketing professionals to help them use Lyris' solutions to achieve their highest online marketing objectives, and she collaborates with product development to ensure Lyris' products are based on marketers' changing needs. This article was originally published on iMedia Connection.

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