I've been sending out email camapigns for clients for over 6 years, and in that time I've seen variations in clickthrough ranging from 3% to 84%!

Some of this is due to the product, or the professionalism of the website, but a great part of it is down to the message that is sent.

So how can you maximise the chances of getting adecent response from your first email campaign?

Follow these simple rules and your email camapaign should be successful right from the beginning.

1) Know What you Want Before you sit down and write your email, think about what you wan tot achieve from it. more visitors to your website? More sales for a hard to sell product? More signups to your newsletter? Or something completely different? Whatever the aim, keep it in mind while writing your email

2) Spell It Write!! There's nothing worse than receiving a marketing email with poor spelling and grammar. If you can't spell and your email doesn't sound right, how can you expect people to buy from you? A marketing writer such as Angela Sherman of Content Creation can help you with this.

3) Not Too Long Keep paragraphs short and punchy - you have very little time to grab people's attetion, and text on a screen is notoriously difficult to read once a paragraph hits more than 4 lines. Stick to simple words, short phrases and paragraphs consisting of just 1-3 short sentences.

4) DON'T SHOUT! USING ALL CAPITALS IS DIFFICULT TO READ AND LOOKS AS IF YOU ARE SHOUTING. DON'T DO IT!

Occasional use of capital letters to emphasise a word is ok, but be aware that some spam filters delete email messages with words all in capitals.

5) Call To Action The first two sentences of your email should identify a possible problem the recipient may have, tell them who you are, and what you want them to do.

So sentences such as: "Fed up with not appearing in search engine listings? NikkiPilkington.com offer guaranteed top listings in most major search engines. Click here for your free report" get the message across quickly and easily. Then you can use the rest of the email to expand on your products and services.

6) Conclude & PS If you have a fairly long email, don't forget to repeat the call to action at the end, and in a PS to remind the reader once again what they should do.

7) Sense of Urgency Create a sense of urgency by using phrases such as 'First 50 to apply' or 'Only valid until' - fear of missing out on something always generates a good click through - guaranteed

So that's your 7 step guide to a great email marketing campaign - for more free internet marketing articles, please visit www.nikkipilkington.com

Nikki Pilkington is the owner manager of NikkiPilkington.com, an internet marketing consultancy based in Northampton UK. Nikki has been marketing websites for almost ten years and specialises in search engine listings and email marketing.