The revised Commandments of Email Marketing

I did a presentation today at work where I used my Five Commandments of Email Marketing.  When I originally did them, I geared them specifically towards admissions email marketing.  I decided it was time to revise them slightly to be more broadly applicable.  Without further ado...

A bit of commentary: 

1. Thou shall send using an external service provider: Outsource, baby, outsource.  There is little to no reason to send your own email.  At one cent per email or less, let someone else handle it.  You'll still get massive ROI.
2. Thou shall make your template simple and unobtrusive: Simple templates are just more effective in getting the user to take the call-to-action as they don't provide any distractions along the way.  You can get super fancy with your design...but if your goal is to get them to DO something, there really isn't any reason for it.  
3. Thou shall make messages as segmented and timely as possible: See Barack Obama's email campaigns if you want an example for how segmentation and timeliness should be done.  The closer you can get to your recipients and their wants and needs, the higher percentage of users you're going to make the sale to.  
4. Thou shall keep copy short and calls to action obvious: You can't take a print letter and literally translate it to email.  Be short, succinct and redundant.  Ask for the sale in every paragraph and in the PS.  Your users are just going to scan the email and look for what you want them to do.  Make it easy to identify.  
5. Thou shall only send messages that offer value to the recipients: Providing value is the hardest Commandment to follow.  I just wrote a post for .eduguru about a book I read over the weekend called Neuromarketing, which talked about our self-centered nature.  You can email people every day of the week without turning them off if you provide them with value.  You can turn them off by only emailing them once a month but giving them nothing.