Tip: Learn from Your Competitors

Before you spend any money, before you budget any funds, see what your competitors are doing. What email channels are they employing? Solo emails? In-line ads within newsletters? Do they have their own newsletters? How do they get new subscribers? Do your competitors run offers similar in nature month in and month out? If so, it's probably working for them, or else they'd do something different. Mind you, sometimes they're testing and don't know themselves if a given campaign is working, which is why you want to track them over months, not weeks.

It's all well and good to closely track and mimic you competitors, but you don't want to do that exclusively or else you only follow in their footsteps. Look for venues where they are not. There may be a good reason why they're not there, or it may be an oversight, or a personal preference that causes them to overlook an opportunity rife with prospects.