In a post at her eponymous blog, Elaine Fogel asks how frequently you receive email with content that has no relevance. "I'll bet it's a lot," she says with certainty. "Let's just look at the ones you receive from companies and organizations that have your permission to send communications. Count the emails they send that have nothing to do with you at all. Delete."

Fogel gives a quick rundown of blatantly irrelevant messages she has received. Here are a few:

• A nonprofit organization thanked her for attending a fundraiser she didn't attend.
• An airline sent offers for flights that didn't depart from her city of residence.

Let's face it: Even if you like a company, like its product or service, like the people who answer the phone—you're going to unsubscribe from an email campaign if you keep getting wildly untargeted messages.

Are you subjecting your subscribers to this type of treatment? According to Fogel, small businesses are especially likely to implement untargeted email campaigns. "Maybe they don't have a marketer on staff to guide them," she conjectures. "Maybe they don't know what segmentation is."

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