What if suddenly good e-mail gone bad? Sometimes, though, you already have an existing email campaign built, and there is no opportunity to change the elements you are working with. When that happens, how can you ensure it will perform?

Jeanniey Mullen has written an article just to cater that problem in Email Insider.

To minimize downtime, email marketer should have contingency plan built for three key scenarios:
1. Deliverability issues. Proactively identify and avoid issue. Infuse e-mail deliverability testing into production process. If problems happen after a campaign is sent, having a reputable delivery vendor partner could help in finding the root cause and resolve the issue quickly.

2. Poor list targeting. When click-to-open rate drops below 20 percent, and the conversions below 1 percent, the contingency plan should be to remail two smaller files from the original email, just a different subject line. The two segments should be a group of people who did not open that e-mail, and a group who either opeend and did not click, or opened and clicked.

3. Bad offer. Repackage offer and/or look for a value-add partner offering to increase response.

Source: Email Insider.