Christopher Knight of EmailUniverse.com shares his insights on e-zine marketing and publishing in 2006, giving the "prediction sport" some great actionable tips, which also include a new tip on using RSS for e-zine publishing.

Also be advised that many of his tips will work equally well for RSS publishing, bringing you ahead of the curve.

Email (Newsletter) Publishing Predictions For 2006

Many email service providers have been spewing their predictions for 2006 and I think I've read them all. Some include bunk that could have been predictions in 2004 or 2005, but you quickly come to the realization that the bulk majority of the market moves about 1-2 years behind the major ezine publishing trends. Yes, there are still some email publishers who think email is used purely for a sales acquisition channel instead of the obvious relationship channel it can be. Read on...

Chris Knight's 2006 Ezine Publishing Predictions:

1) RSS feeds (yours) integrates as a module to help create your ezine on the fly.

Savvy early adopter ezine publishers will find new ways to integrate RSS feeds into email newsletters, email alerts and customized on-demand customer requested email information. Dynamic content can be highly personalized and timelier than humanly assembled email content.

RSS into EMAIL doesn't have to be the kiss of automation death or the cold feel that many perceive but rather RSS can easily slip or integrate into a PHP generated ezine or email publishing template. I had originally thought no one would like a purely RSS generated newsletter, but I highly recommend integrating an RSS fed component into your email publishing strategy as a means to UP the relevancy of the information and DECREASE the amount of labor or time to create your ezine.

2) Increase Raw Delivery Frequency.

Publishers stuck in 2002 suddenly realize that they must increase the frequency of their ezine to achieve the same results they once achieved with fewer emails. I'm not saying that 4-8 emails a month should be on your "must do" list, but 1-2 emails a month is not a high enough frequency any more. This advice does not apply to early adopter publishers or those who keep up with the beat by giving their members the choice as to which frequency they like best.

3) Get Intimate, Get Relevant, & Get Segmenting.

Anything less will quickly separate you from your competitors. Your list members will be able to easily detect which provider cares most about them and they will use their perception of your messages relevance to their life or business as a measuring stick.

4) Design for Deliverability.

Assuming you have a smart email list hosting service provider that is helping you achieve and track your actual email deliverability performance, one of the primary elements that you can control (besides good permission practices) is your email/ezine design template. What tweaks can you make to improve your emails ability to enter and stay in the inbox of your recipients? How does your ezine render in various email clients such as Outlook, Lotus Notes, Eudora, AOL, and Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail?

5) Design for Usability.

When you notice that your Mom has a Blackberry, your sister or brother has a Treo 650 and you sport one of those handheld email downloading, reading and sending cell phone gadgets, ...it's then that you know it's time to begin finding ways to deliver your message to an increasingly mobile email recipient.

6) Design for Readers That Only Review Your Emails in the Preview Pane and Block Images.

I don't read any of the thousands of emails that slide through my PC in a preview pane, but the rest of the world seems to be moving in that direction. There are times when I look at an ezine that I sent out that was replied to by a member who is asking a question and I get to see how my ezine rendered to them in a completely different way than I had sent it out. Wake up call time. Not ready to address this? Then start by simply adding ALT-TEXT to your images so that your readers can see your text when the image gets blocked.

7) Who Gives A Hoot About The Open Rate or CTR?

Nobody. Move on. There are better metrics to track or not track on purpose (citing that some ezine publishers report improved click through rate when no CTR tracking is enabled due to anti-phising schemes integrated in email clients designed to detect when a published view of a URL is different than the URL in the tracking code. Instead, focus on the end-outcomes you want your recipients to have or do.

8) Email Analytics and Web Analytics Get Married.

No divorce anytime soon for this couple.

9) Wake up Inactive List Members.

List members who don't take action are worthless. Savvy publishers will find ways to stir the pot, wake these folks up and either get them to take some kind of action or be purged from the list. Upon stirring the pot, magically your metrics improve as do sales.

10) Dumb Publishers Who Spam Are Identified in Blogs as a Nuisance.

Be a good permission-based email publisher. It was the thing to do 5-7+ years ago and a small percentage of clueless firms are about to be struck publicly by influential bloggers with nothing to lose.

11) Further Automate The Start of Each Email Relationship.

Care must be given to the sequence of emails and events that new members receive when they are integrated into your marketing funnel. Previously you just threw them into the pile with the rest of your members, but the first 1-4 months of any new email member is when they will decide if you are friend or foe/waste of time.

12) Do Further Predictive Emails Based On Client/Prospect Activity

If your prospect or client does X, then send them customized email Y. The more you can touch your clients with relevant and highly personal emails, the more confidence you can achieve and we all know that unlocking client confidence is one of the keys to unlocking their wallet.

13) Focus on Reducing List Churn.

List growth is hard enough to achieve, but to lose members to natural attrition or abandonment because you don't care enough about them is a shame.

14) Create Your DNE Already.

Every email publisher needs a global Do Not Email (DNE) list that must get established and then respected by all departments. This is a common sense move that many publishers have not embraced yet. Think of it as a deliverability insurance move.

This Ezine-Tip was submitted By Christopher Knight -- Email List Marketing Expert, author and entrepreneur. Get your weekly dose of Email newsletter publishing, marketing, promotion, management, email-etiquette, email usability and deliverability tips by joining the free Ezine-Tips newsletter: http://www.emailuniverse.com/subscribe/.