Forrester Research recently released their “Best And Worst Of Email Marketing In 2006” report and the results were surprising.

“Marketers trip over the basics,” they proclaimed after looking at 63 email marketing programs for companies in a variety of industries, both B2B and B2C.

Of those 63 programs, they gave only one a “passing grade,” explaining that companies needed to improve these basic practices:

• Registration tactics
• Email design
• Focus on customer needs

Study authors Shar VanBoskirk and Jennifer Joseph point out that B2B marketers and financial services marketers are struggling the  most. They also suggest that all email marketers “create emails that humanize the digital experience.”

The report itself is $279, and if you’d like to improve your email marketing program this year, it can help you identify specific areas of improvement and compare your practices to other industries.

Here Are Other Resources with Tips to Improve Email Campaigns

• Open rates by subject line:  The folks at MailChimp (an email delivery service) studied more than 40 million emails sent by their clients.  This chart will quickly show you what type of subject lines work best.
• MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007.  For $247, this study of 3,637 email marketers packs enough data to keep you busy all year.  Includes email campaign response data, eyetracking maps, forms, and a critical section on corporate email filters and blacklists that affect B2B email delivery. Highly recommended.
• Chris Baggott’s email marketing blog: Chris is the co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer at ExactTarget. He and his company have won plenty of awards for their service and for Chris’ blog, which provides plenty of helpful how-tos for marketers.
• Here’s a post I liked about order confirmation emails – every online retailer on the planet should read it.