What three things are crucial for any company to know before embarking on an email marketing initiative? To help provide this answer, to email marketing beginners and veterans alike, our Email Marketing Thought Leader interview series turns to London-based Dave Chaffey.

Chaffey is an Email marketing consultant and author of “Total Email Marketing.” Chaffey also posts regular insight to Dave Chaffey’s Right Touching Blog.

In our interview below, Chaffey reveals three email marketing tips most crucial for you company to know about email marketing and the single most important component of any email marketing campaign:

The carefree days of email marketing’s youth were spent blasting emails to as many people as possible. What a party that was – sort of a combination of pledge week and Spring Break. Email was and is cheap to send. And in the past, email campaigns just seemed to make money, no matter how poor the methodology, and that sure looked good compared to the other marketing channels.