Email
formatting guide|
by
David Callan
You've
started using
autoresponders, Ezines and
opt-in lists to market your products
and websites, you've been waiting for
a few days for the profits to roll in,
but nothin, not even one sale. Why?
Well the problem's either that your
ad copy is so poor and filled with so
many misspellings that people simply
couldn't be bothered to check out, never
mind buy your product.
The
more likely problem is the format of
your email. Ask yourself the following
question. Am I sure that everyone can
see my email alright? The answer, probably
not, but you should be sure, well at
least 90% sure because there are always
going to be quirky and weird email services
and programs out there which display
everything differently from the standard
way.
I
presume you understand why email formatting
is so important to your email marketing
campaign, if not here's a few sentences
that should enable you to understand.
>Our
new product is so
>great, please buy our product, it's
>really cheap and
>great value.
>If you buy now you can save 55%
off the
>normal
>sale price. You probably don't wont
>to buy from us because as you can
see we don't take our
>job
>seriously, heck we don't even to
both
>er to format our emails that
>we send out to our
>potential customers, but if you
do for some reason still want to
>buy, click here.
When
someone opens this email you instantly
lose any professionalism and credibility
you may have had before. The effect
is twice as negative on your sales than
the poor copy filled with misspelling
problems. This is because people won't
bother to even read your email, never
mind about them noticing poor spelling
and copy. If people don't even read
your email then you're not going to
make a dime. Making money is what it's
all about, that's why email formatting
is so important.
What
can you do the make sure that at least
90% of the people you're emailing your
message to can see it properly. Well
there are two or three things that stand
out in my mind when I'm writing and
therefore formatting my emails.
First
up there's line length, this is what
I consider to be the most important
element when formatting. It's the main
cause of the silly looking email above.
Most email readers such as Eudora, Pegasus
and both Microsofts Outlook and Outlook
express will open on default to line
lengths of 65 characters, so all you've
to do to avoid the problem is set your
line length to 65 characters which equals
an indentation of about 2 and a half
inches. Doing this will mean that almost
everyone you send emails to will all
be seeing the same or similar layout.
I
say almost because some older clients
don't have text wrap and your email
could display as one long line of text.
These clients are dying fast especially
as Eudora and Microsoft both offer a
free client from their respective websites,
but for extra piece of mind always press
the return button every 65 characters,
doing this will eradicate the problem
of older clients.
Make
sure your paragraphs are short, maybe
around five or six lines, anything longer
will take up too much space and the
reader will most likely find it very
difficult to read. Again if someone
can't read they also can't buy. Having
white space will make your email look
and read better so remember five or
six lines per paragraph only.
The
next point to remember when formatting
an email is that most email clients
use fixed width fonts to display emails.
This means that if you're typing and
formatting an email in Arial or any
other non-fixed width when in fact most
of the people that are going to see
it have email clients that use a fixed
width font such as courier, you can
bet your bottom dollar that it's going
to look very messy for them.
Therefore
always type your emails in courier.
The courier font looks good even when
the person uses an email client which
defaults to a non-fixed width font like
arial. Currently however the only big
name email client that doesn't default
to a fixed width font is Eurdora so
using arial just doesn't make sense
at all.
There
you have it, the above few pointers
should steer you onto the right track
and at least give your Ezine, autoresponder
and opt-in emails a chance of pulling
a bit of profit for you.
 |
10
Ways to Profit from an Email Newsletter |
The
appearance of your e-zine is one of the
most important factors in determining
your e-zine's success. Getting subscribers
is the easy part. Keeping them will entail
a little work. A professionally written,
well designed, content rich publication
will insure your e-zines success.When
formatting your e-zine, keep in mind there
are many different types of email programs
and they are not all created equal. As
a general rule, to accommodate all of
your subscribers and their different email
programs, it is probably best to write
your e-zine in plain text. As with email
programs, word processing programs are
not all created equal as well. Programs
like Microsoft Word, etc., are great for
writing business letters, sales letters,
etc., but not a good choice for writing
your newsletter due to formatting issues.A
good program to consider using is Notepad.
This program should already be on your
desktop. Another
consideration of great importance is your
line length. If your text lines are too
long, some email programs that aren't
capable of viewing long text lines will
force the last few words to the next line
and your text will be viewed like this:When
formatting your publication your text
length is one of the most important factors
in determining how professional your publication
will appear. As
a rule, a generally safe line-length is
65 characters (including spaces).A
good way to count your characters is to
type out the following code at the top
of your e-zine.Type:
01234567890123456789 until you reach 65
characters.As
you begin typing your text, when you reach
the end of your code, use a hard carriage
return. (Hit Enter) Once you have determined
your proper line-length, erase your code.If
you'd rather not have to worry about hard
carriage returns, you might want to use
a program called "TextPad".
http://www.textpad.com This program can
be set to automatically insert a hard
carriage return when your text has reached
65 characters.When
you're ready to begin, make an outline
for the contents of your e-zine to enable
you to create a template.
When
you're ready to copy & paste your
e-zine into your email program, make certain
your email preferences are set to allow
at least 65 characters of text per line.
If your preferences are set for less,
when you paste your text to be mailed
it will appear to be improperly formatted.
It
is highly recommended that you send a
sample copy of your publication to yourself
prior to sending it to your subscribers.
By viewing your publication in this manner
you will get an idea of what your subscribers
will see and it will enable you to correct
any formatting problems.
CLICK
HERE TO DOWNLOAD A COPY OF "10 WAYS TO
PROFIT FROM AN EMAIL NEWSLETTER" |
