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Internet Marketing : Formatting for Email Marketing Success

It's a common problem. You've used autoresponders, Ezines and opt-in lists as an Internet marketing strategy. You've waited for a few days to see some profits roll in, but nothing has happened. Not even one sale. Why? Well the problem is either that your ad copy is poor or improperly formatted. In email marketing, making the most powerful statement comes down to how clearly the message is communicated within the email format.

Appearance and Email Marketing

It is most likely that the problem is the formatting 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 before embarking on any email marketing strategy. There will always be quirky and weird email services and programs out there which display everything differently from the standard way, but you should be at least 90% sure your copy's appearance is standardized.

If formatting of email marketing copy is off, the results can be far from professional. In some mail readers, poorly formatted copy could take on the following appearance.

>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 this email is viewed, you instantly lose any credibility. The effect is twice as negative on your sales than the poor copy filled with misspelling problems. People won't bother to even read your email, never mind notice poor spelling and copy.

Formatting for a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

There are three things to do when formatting email marketing material to increase the percentage of viewers that can see the copy properly.

• Line Length - This is probably 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 Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook express will open on default to line lengths of 65 characters. To avoid the problem of wrapping shown above, set your line length to 65 characters. This 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. Be aware that because some older mail clients don't have text wrap, your email could display as one long line of text. These clients are dying fast, especially as Eudora and Microsoft both offer a free email client, but for extra piece of mind always press the return button every 65 characters. This eradicates the problem for older clients.
• Keep It Short - Make sure your paragraphs are short, maybe around five or six lines. Anything longer takes up too much space and the viewer 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.
• Choose Fonts Wisely - 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, you can bet your bottom dollar that it's going to look very messy for them. Therefore always type your emails in Courier font. It 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 for successful email marketing. Formatted correctly, your Ezine, autoresponder and opt-in emails are more likely to be an effective Internet marketing strategy.

About the Author : David Callan is an Internet marketing professional and webmaster of AKA Marketing.com webmaster forums.

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