Jul
24
Marketing Material Tip: Optimizing Text Email Newsletters
By KarinStarting an email newsletter or ezine (pronounced “eee-zeen”) can be easy if you remember it’s more important to be in touch consistently and share valuable content rather than spend hours upon hours tweaking your constant contact template.
(I’m a big fan of focusing on making progress, versus trying for perfection. So if you feel your target market would only respect a beautiful magazine-like newsletter template, I suggest you outsource the production of your ezine to a pro.)
So an easy way to get started is to send out a text ezine. (You can upgrade later!) Here are a few ways to make a text ezine look more professional and easy to read in an email:
- Add a line break in between each section of your newsletter
Something that resembles this: *****************************
- Add a double space between the line breaks as well as the sentence above and below it.
- CAPITALIZE each letter of each section title so it stands out a bit more.
- Make your paragraphs no more than 1-2 sentences.
In text emails, anything more than that looks like a lot to read and overwhelms the reader.
- Don’t write too much. Write more frequently instead.
- Have one message per ezine. It facilitates the reader’s ability to remember your message when it is kept specific. So avoid writing multiple tips, recipes and resources.
- To keep your text ezines easy on the eye, link back to your blog for the full feature tip or article.
Also, include 1-2 sentences or 1 short paragraph that entices the reader to check out the full tip on your blog. This just becomes a back-up to the forms of promotion you have already created.
- To further format your text ezine, copy/paste your text into the following webpage: FormatIt.com.
In just a few seconds, this free service formats your ezine to be no longer than 50 characters wide, keeping your ezine sharp and easy to read.
Hope this helps!
Karin
Learn more about revamping your message and sharing your talents with the world by signing up for my newsletter. Get the details here.
Categories : Blog, Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, Materials that Work, Newsletters, Words That Work
2 Comments
July 25th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Really good tips there Karen,
For text newsletters it can also be a good idea to use tiny urls for your weblinks.
I have found that long web links in text e-mails sometimes get delivered on the wonky side and mess up the link.
The tiny url would keep the links inacted and under 50 characters.