Are you getting the most out of your social media investment? Every visitor you get from social networks should be captured to your list. Would you be as worried about reach on social platforms if you had all your Facebook friends, for example, on your mailing list already?

What You Send Must Be Mobile Responsive

Do you know if the emails you are sending are mobile responsive? You need to know because SmartPhone usage is climbing. The graph below shows the number of American adults who own a Smartphone through January 2014.

According to The Mobile Movement, 82% of smartphone users check and respond to email using their devices. Even those who have not yet switched to smartphones can check email, but are less likely to compose and send responses.

Are You SURE eMail You Send Displays Correctly on ALL Devices?

Before you send one more email, you need to verify that you are using a mobile responsive template. Even if your email provider now provides mobile responsive templates you most likely need to update any older templates you created.

Many debate whether to send email as text or html. Why not do both? Your email solution should have a box you can check to automatically create a text version. Focus on creating really compelling, visually appealing email. If your email solution is not able to create text versions for you or does not have mobile responsive templates, you might consider switching.

The video below shows how easy it is to design custom email templates in GetResponse. I'm seeing a lot of buzz from long time users of other email marketing solutions switching to GetResponse. The reasons they give are that it is easier to use and slightly less expensive than what they were currently using.

While it can be hazardous to the size of your list to switch providers if they require you to get every subscriber to double-opt in again, GetResponse will allow you to move your existing double-opt-in list without the risk of losing any of your subscribers. They do verify the quality of lists to keep spammers away.

Nothing is more important than building your list. It is getting much harder to get organic visitors. You need to be capturing them to your lists. Pay-per-click advertising such as AdWords is getting more expensive. Are you making the most of any ad spend by ensuring those people subscribe?

Spending time on social networks brings you visitors. Before you interact one more minute make list building your priority. Create an obvious capture form. Learn to use email marketing exceptionally well. Only then can you join the ranks of those with the strongest incomes.

Email Marketing Tips:

• Keep your emails short. People are busy and when they save long emails for later, later never comes!
• Put social sharing buttons in your emails so your subscribers can more easily share them.
• Make sure every email contains a link to get to your store, site or blog.
• Add links to your social networks, especially Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, G+ and Pinterest.

Always send your emails to yourself as a test and click every link. The number of emails I receive with links that don't work is very high. Don't be "that guy or gal".

Email marketing is REALLY important. If you just can't figure out how to do it yourself or don't have the time, pay someone to do it for you. If you don't, years from now you'll be saying like I do: do as I say - not as I did.