Most people talk about different things with different people. With one friend the conversation might usually focus on relationships. With another, perhaps talk turns more naturally to movies, books, sports or politics.

You would be unlikely to appeal to your relationship-discussing friend if you were to engage in a monologue about your opinion of our current political leaders. However, if you started in with that same screed to your politics-loving friend, he or she would greet it with a smile that says “Let the games begin!“

The same theory applies to communicating with your customers and prospects. “One of the most important things to keep in mind when developing your campaign is relevance, says Yael Penn, Principal of Imagine Creative Marketing. “If you send a message recipients are interested in receiving, you will get their attention and your campaign will be a success. However, if your message is not relevant to their interests or current needs, they will most likely ignore it, or even worse, unsubscribe from your database and you’ll never be able to communicate with them again!”

There are four main elements of a successful permission-based email campaign:

• segmenting the database
• enhancing the existing database
• communicating with the database
• tracking the campaign

Neil Anuskiewicz looks at each of these in this article.