A good copyrighting course is recommended to anyone who will be sending out sales emails. While these courses typically relate to copy used on web pages, the same concept can be applied to email.

1. Tons of research has been done concerning the best day to send email. Research has found that the best days are Tuesdays and Thursdays.

2. Never send an email out to your list without testing it. First, use a spell checker, a spam checker, and finally, email it to yourself before you send it to anyone else.

3. You can write an outstanding sales email, but if you send it to the wrong people, it is worthless. Use targeted marketing techniques when building your email list.

4. Research has shown that people need to see a message approximately seven times before they will buy something. Don’t just recommend the product once – recommend it multiple times.

5. Never send out more than one email per day. Depending on your audience, you may want to cut that down to once or twice a week. At the same time, you don’t want them to forget about you. Never let more than a week go by without contacting your prospects.

6. You can send old offers to your new prospects, as long as the messages that you write are not ‘time specific.’ This will help you to keep profiting from your old emails over and over again, as long as they are still relevant. Make sure that you keep those old emails clean, and delete emails for products that are no longer viable.

7. HTML sure makes an email look better. Unfortunately, many email clients either won’t accept HTML email, or the prospect has set their client to refuse HTML. Stick with plain text for best results.

8. Don’t confuse your prospects. In each email, there should only be one of two actions to take. First, they can take the action that you desire, and second, they can close the email and take no action at all. Those should be the only two choices.

9. Even though you are using plain text, most email clients will create a clickable link if you type in a URL. Make sure that you send the email to yourself and make sure that the link is indeed clickable.

10. Many people use web based email. You should too, for testing purposes. Test your email in different browsers, including Internet Explorer, FireFox, Netscape, and Opera. All of these browsers are free, and you can test them with any free email account.

11. People hate to be sold to. Make sure that the verbiage you are using is not a hard sales pitch.

12. Make sure that all of your email isn’t designed to make a sale. People will come to trust you more, and get the sense that you are trying to help them out if you also refer them to free resources, as opposed to always referring them to products that they must purchase.

13. You want your readers to feel like they are your friends. In some of your emails, you should refer to real personal details about your life. This can be anything from referring to something cute your kid did to an interesting, somehow related, conversation you had with your wife. Mention your family members by name.

14. Avoid abbreviations, including ‘cyber terminology.’ While such things are fine in personal email to your friends, it really isn’t appropriate if you hope to build a personal relationship with prospects. Some people have no idea what those abbreviations mean.

15. Pay attention to how other people’s sales emails affect you. Open your email client, download your mail, and record your thoughts regarding what you were thinking or feeling as you read each sales email. This is a really enlightening exercise.

1. You must not use false or misleading header information. This means that the ‘from’ and ‘to’ fields of the email must be accurate. You cannot use a false name, or make it appear that the email came from anyone other than yourself. This should not be a problem if you are using an autoresponder service.

2. You may not use deceptive subject lines. This portion of the law basically states that you can’t use the subject line to make the recipient think that the email is something other than what it is.

3. You must provide the recipient with a method for opting out. This means that you need to provide instructions for unsubscribing from your list. This can either be an email address used for unsubscribing, or a website link for unsubscribing. Most reputable autoresponders will automatically add this information at the bottom of the email, but you need to be sure of that.

4. You must supply a valid physical postal address in the email. This is typically added at the bottom of the email, and is usually done so automatically if using a good autoresponder. Note that you may not use a post office box for the address. It must be either your physical address, or the physical address of your company.

It is really easy to be CAN-SPAM compliant, and again, a good autoresponder will ensure that you are. If for some reason you must be CAN-SPAM compliant manually, make sure that you include information for opting out, and your physical address at the bottom of each message. Here is an example.

Remember that sending spam will not only make you look bad, ruin your reputation, and result in fines and potential jail time, but it also makes marketers around the world look bad.