In the decade since email became a viable marketing and publishing channel, a set of "best practices" has evolved for everything from signing up new subscribers to optimizing messages for best display. However, our audit of 203 commercial email messages found --

If you want to write better subject lines, article titles and teasers, reach for a National Geographic magazine cover and study the taglines. In just three to five well-chosen words, they draw the reader in past the classic yellow-rimmed cover with its gorgeous color photography to the cover story and secondary material.

Look at it from your customer’s or your reader’s point of view and ask yourself this important question: What benefit are they receiving from you when you blast them with untargeted or irrelevant emails?

So you press the send button on your email distribution and then anxiously watch as everything from opens and clicks, to bounces and spam complaints roll into your email reporting interface. But in addition, you may receive hundreds or thousands of "reply-to" emails coming back to someone's inbox at your company. Who's watching your reply mailbox for these messages, such as unsubscribe or challenge-response requests, bounces and blocks?