Don’t tell my LyntonWeb coworkers in the Marketing Department, but I don’t like marketing emails. They’re fine people (mostly), and create great content for LyntonWeb and our customers. But it’s some of our colleagues in the marketing world that give marketers a bad name.

Do you remember when you first got an email address? For me it was back in 1995, and any new email back then was exciting. New jokes from a comedy newsletter, an African prince who needed help to free his inheritance, a chain letter that I had to forward on to 12 people. Whatever. It was new and exciting.

Now 145 billion emails are sent every day. We have computers, smartphones, tablets, and wearable tech like Google Glass. And soon smart watches that all ding, boop, beep, buzz, and yo at us letting us know we have a new message. Is it from your wife? Your parents? Maybe it’s pictures of your niece and nephews? Nope, it’s an email for 20% off all orders over $50 from that store you bought one thing off of as a gift 5 years ago but they still email you every week.

20 years later email is something we all begrudgingly deal with.

So how can you make sure that you’re making crabby email recipients like me happy with your email marketing?

Don’t care about you. Care about me.

Oh, you’ve got a new product? Good for you. It’s how fast? Sweet. It’s built with cutting edge technology that allows you to perfor-Zzzzzzzzzzz. Sorry, I fell asleep.

Snark aside, it’s great that you’ve rolled out a new product. That’s a huge feat.

But here’s the thing. Most of your customers don’t care how you made it, or any of the behind-the-scenes stuff. That’s not going to make them plunk down some cold hard cash. What will make them say good bye to the Benjamins is telling them, and showing them, how your product will benefit them.

The kicker is to keep your emails simple. People aren’t going to read your email if the length rivals War and Peace, but they will read a few key bullet points, an infographic or chart, or a short video.

Tell me how often you are going to bother me.

How often are you going to email me? You don’t need to tell me an exact number, a ballpark number will do fine. If you email me every day you’ve got a one way ticket on the express train to unsubscribesville. But if you tell me up front that I’ll hear from you once or twice a week, or 3 or 4 times a month, I’m more likely to sign up since I know what I’m getting into.

Last Christmas I received daily emails from MLB about products for sale. It was infuriating. If you are emailing your customers every day you better be adding a lot to their lives. Our time is limited and precious (hold on, I almost have three stars on this level of Angry Birds).

Take a look at our blog subscription page. We give the power to our readers. We let them choose how often they receive blog update emails from us. This way they know what to expect and how often we’re going to email them. They may not be able to keep up with daily emails, but once a week may be something they’re able to digest and actually give your content the time it deserves.

Don’t send me crap I don’t want.

I’m a fairly political person, and on occasion make donations to certain candidates or groups. When donating I’ve subscribed to a few newsletters to stay up to date. However, the emails that followed were not news updates about the candidate or campaign, but emails asking for further donations. The closer an election or big event is the more I receive these emails. I already donated, I only wanted news and updates.

I’m also signed up for email updates from the NHL, but I indicated I only wanted to receive email updates about the New Jersey Devils, my favorite team. They sent me more than one email with news about a regional rival that had NOTHING to do with my team. Why would I care? That’s not what I am interested in.

Smart marketing and lead information gathering gives you such insight into your lead database. By analyzing the data you have a pretty good idea what your customers like. So market to that. It’s like they say, you catch more honey with bears than bees. Wait, that’s not right. Whatever, you get my point.

Think of it this way:

With outbound marketing you can spend money on a campaign to send a mailer to 1,000 households. Only a small fraction of those households will be in your target demo, and then only a smaller fraction of those households will actually be interested. Then a smaller fraction will contact you, purchase from you and so on and so on.

Now compare that to what you can do with modern inbound marketing software. You can segment your database based on any and all data that you’ve collected from your users. That way any time you contact your customers, you can be 100% sure that the content you are creating and sending out is targeted to the people who are the most interested in it. And it will be the people who are the most open to your communications.

Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon (I am), but besides being a very self-serving blog for me, these tips can help you send your emails to a more targeted base. Which will help you spend your time and money more efficiently.

This article originally appeared on LyntonWeb.