As with any marketing concept or technique, there are loads of opinions about how to design an effective marketing campaign.

When developing a marketing strategy, considering various techniques that have worked well for other people is certainly a good thing to do.

However, your specific business, your target market and what you are trying to accomplish through your marketing campaign will be central to developing an effective marketing campaign for your business.

Before you even consider sending out email marketing messages, there are some tasks to be undertaken to make sure that your marketing efforts aren't wasted.

First of all, you absolutely have to know your target market and its characteristics. This knowledge can be gained through market research.

The demographics of your target audience, such as gender, age and median income, will play a role in crafting your messages in a manner that will appeal to the audience receiving them.

Learning the target audiences buying patterns can be helpful as well. Are they impulse shoppers? Are they bargain shoppers or do they value quality over price? Answering these questions will help you to develop an appropriate copywriting strategy for your marketing materials.

Another important factor in designing an email marketing campaign is to obtain a list of email addresses for individuals in your target market. Just any old list isn't going to be effective.

You need an opt-in list of individuals who actually want to receive information about the products or services that you are promoting.

Sometimes you can buy a so-called opt-in list of email addresses for people who have requested information that you may be providing, but honestly, I don't consider that to be an opt-in list.

Rather I consider people who have provided their contact information specifically requesting information from your company to be opt-in candidates for receiving email promotions.

In my opinion, to build your own opt-in list you should offer something of value, such as a newsletter or free reports to website visitors.

When and only when they opt to receive such information, should they be added to your opt-in list of subscribers who receive email marketing messages from you.

Your messages should also contain an opt-out option where the receivers of the message have the option to be removed from your mailing list.

Otherwise, your messages may be considered to SPAM (unsolicited email) which is not only annoying, but is also illegal now.

When you send SPAM, you also stand the risk of having your email address or server blacklisted with internet service providers which will effectively shut down the delivery of your email messages.

When writing your email marketing messages there are some important copywriting techniques that you can use to increase the effectiveness of your campaign.

First, consider personalizing your messages by using the recipients' names and ensuring that the information they receive is actually something they have indicated that they have an interest in.

Be sure that your messages contain compelling benefits to the reader along with a clear call to action that creates a sense of urgency.

It is also important that the format of your email is able to be read by all recipients. So, the format of the messages is something to consider.

If you use plain text, it is a little more difficult to call attention to specific portions of the message; however, most anyone will be able to open and read the message if you send it in plain text format.

If you use HTML format or even rich text, there will likely be some recipients that are unable to open or read your email messages.