6) What should a good campaign generate in terms of response rates; i.e. those that clicked through from your message to a web site or called a toll-free number? These numbers will fluctuate based again upon your market segment, product or service you are selling, type of response rate you are seeking (download, ecommerce sale, review of materials via a web site, etc.). But, industry averages are from 4% up to 20% - unfortunately these numbers are going south as more and more companies integrate opt-in e-mail with interactive and offline marketing processes.

7) Message testing is also a very important component of this process – meaning, you need to develop 1-3 messages ("creative" in marketing speak) that have different content and call to action components. Then test by utilizing 10-15% of your total media buy by sending out these test messages and assessing response rates and go to market with message that generated highest return. Be forewarned, this process can slow campaign down, but testing can help you increase your response rates or back end ROI exponentially.

8) Your interactive ad agency or list partner should help you setup "landing page(s)" - actual page where people are taken via a hyperlink in your opt-in e-mail message. This page should have content that is integrated with your opt-in message and act as a response mechanism by capturing sufficient information to enable you to build your own in-house newsletter, which in turn helps to leverage downstream media costs.

9) Finally, last and most important part of process is setting up tracking reports that will enable you to carefully analyze results from your opt-in e-mail campaign. This is typically done by inserting 1-2 lines of HTML code on 3-5 pages of your web site (product overview, registration, or home/index pages for instance) – a report can then be generated that shows number of respondents for each page as a subset of overall response rates from campaign. This critical analysis process will help you understand effectiveness of your overall campaign and will also provide valuable insight about your web site content, UI (User Interface) and navigation.

Contact your web host and simply ask, then follow directions. Most often it involves very straightforward, simple set-up steps and can be done while on support line with your host.

I've seen small business owners change name of company and then stick with their old domain name and email addresses because they don't want to bother with simple set-up of a new email address through their host or service provider. This is completely unacceptable for business uses. Get an email address that matches your company domain name without fail.

If you don't have a domain name for your business, SHAME ON YOU! It was still being actively debated a year or two ago whether using a generic host and email address was necessary and/or desirable, but is no longer even discussed. It's mandatory to have domain name, and email capability comes with that domain name at every host across internet. Get branded!

Email addresses speak volumes about their owners, and while it is more common for personal emails to identify their owners by creative and interesting monikers like RastaDreadlock or even lots_of_laughs - imagination seems to falter or fail completely when it comes to business email identities. Since establishing my first educational domain a few years ago, I've used email address of learn@website101.com to help clarify what site is all about.

It's easy to tell that site is educational and clearly emphasizes main activity visitors can expect when seeing only my email address. Does your email address tell something about you and your business role? Do you want to be known to your clients and contacts as webmaster@mycompany.com or would it serve you better to be seen in communications online with a more descriptive title like DigitalAlchemist@MyCompany.com?

Do you communicate with conservative and stuffy people, digital geeks or real humans? Clearly, it's best not to alienate your customers in your first email because they expect a serious title for your serious business. But give some thought to being something ever so slightly more interesting than info@blah.com! Make it more descriptive than admin@DullBusiness.com and more truthful than Support@BadCompany.com

You can also have multiple addresses to reflect your varied roles in company. While it may be expected at corporations to be M.Smith@Giantco.com, try to break out of corporate mold when establishing email addresses for your less stuffy role as an online entrepreneur with Mary@LittleLamb.com! How about adding to that a descriptive WoolGatherer@LittleLamb.com and even Wolf@LittleLamb.com for accounts payable role?

Clients and customers will make assessments of your company based on things as simple as email addresses and while not always conscious, that customer appraisal says much about your business, your attitude and your priorities. Don't waste your email address as a branding tool that brands you as unimaginative or ignorant when it is possible to use that simple resource to add polish and sparkle to your image.