If you are reaching out to touch a customer with e-mail, make sure you're sending information of value, and get to the point quickly.   Here are some simple things you need to get right:

• The "subject" line is as critical as the opening salvo in a sales letter.  Fail here and your e-mail is trashed before it is even opened.

• Personalize, personalize, personalize!  Ideally your e-mail is personalized at several levels: It is meant for "me" and uses my name.  It contains information I want and can use.   Your "what's on sale" items are things I use and need.   Maybe there's new information helping me make better use of something I purchased from you or information generally useful to me given your knowledge of my interests.

• If your customers use AOL … and 40% or so of them do…you'll have special challenges both in terms of how AOL handles SPAM and how they display e-mail to their users.

• If you are sending out a newsletter, you need to think through format and organization.  Include live links back to your site if that makes things quicker for the reader.

• And most important of all, NEVER repeatedly send unsolicited sales e-mail!   Make sure your e-mail is all "opt-in," meaning, your customer asked for it.   All e-mail must contain instructions and mechanisms making it easy for a customer to tell you that he or she now wishes to "opt-out" or change the e-mail address for your messages.