figures show year-over-year increase in delivery rates (cleaner emailing lists), and a decrease in open rates and

click-through rates. The variations are light, proving a steady and maturing environment. DoubleClick's metrics

The data analyzed were based on more than 2 billion messages sent by hundreds DARTmail customers, measuring bouncebacks, open

rates, click-throughs and conversions (open to sales, or click to sales ratio). The results were reported for 2004 and

compared to 2003.

DoubleClick used unweighted averages for all analyzed categories. This helps eliminating influence that large email

marketers could have over category averages, as report states.

The email marketing categories considered in study were:

* Business Products & Services

* Consumer Products

* Consumer Services

* Financial Services

* Travel

* Retail&Catalog

* Publisher - Business

* Publisher - Consumer

Email marketing performances

Here are 5 tips to help you increase your profits.

All 5 work for any business and they won't cost you anything to implement.

1. Joint Ventures

Joint ventures offering unlimited profit opportunities for your business. The idea of a joint venture is to partner with a business owner that is not in direct competition with your business.

For example, let's say John sells a book about how to save money at grocery store. John could partner with certain grocery stores to sell his book at their counters for a cut of profits.

Joint ventures are perfect for people with limited funds for their business because most ventures can be set up on a profit share basis. In other words, no up front money is spent by you on advertising in exchange you give business advertising your offer a cut of profits.

2. Upgrades

Commonly overlooked by business owners, upgrade is a powerful profit producer. When people buy from your business they demonstrate trust in you and your product. Why not offer them another related product or service and gain those extra dollars for your business.

Upgrades help you service your customers by delivering valuable information they more than likely want from you.

Some businesses use upgrades as their main profit point. They sell lower priced products to get people to buy from and trust them, then offer a higher priced product (this is where they make large profit) later on.

3. Using unused resources

As a web user you've probably come across dreaded 404 file not found pages while browsing around web.

These pages are a perfect example of tapping into unused resources. Almost all of these pages can be customized to redirect people back to your web site or make a direct offer.