Black Belt Web Marketing.pdf - Costa del Sol

Formatting: Test to see that your e-mail is formatted properly (see below). Send it to a friend or
another email box. Have it reviewed for properly formatting, appearance.
Avoiding Formatting Snafus
The effectiveness of your message to members of your list is reduced if your e-mail isn’t
formatted properly. You don’t want it to be immediately disposed of because it "didn’t look
right." These are most commons forms of formatting snafus:
No line wrapping: If you type an e-mail without using hard carriage returns at the end of a line, it
may not look right if the recipient’s e-mail program doesn’t automatically line wrap.
Paragraph appear as one long line. The recipient is forced to either insert hard carriage
returns where line breaks should be or keep scrolling to the right to read your message.
Chances are pretty good that the delete key will be used before the recipient does either of
these two steps. To avoid this, insert a hard return at the end of each line, after say 65
characters.
Non-Standard Characters: The other major problem is the use of non-standard characters,
especially curly quotations, apostrophes, and dashes. ASCII equivalents are nonsensical.
Your e-mail loses goodwill in translation.
Formatting Techniques: Some of the formatting you might use for paper communications
disappear when sent as an ASCII-text email. Tabs, italics, bold, difference in point sizes,
unusual characters (e.g., dingbats), etc. vanish when e-mailed. Your e-mail is left without
any of the emphasis, aesthetics, or attention getters you had hoped for.
Non-Proportional Fonts: Fonts used by different e-mail programs vary. Some use fixed pitch fonts
(e.g., Courier). Some use proportional spaced fonts (e.g., AOL). Characters in a fixed
pitch font line up directly above each other. Not so with proportional spaced fonts. Some
letters, CAPS, spaces, and other characters are wider, so each line length is different. If
you create an e-mail in one type of font and the recipient’s e-mail program uses another
type, your e-mail will look different – maybe not so hot. One solution is to insert hard
carriage returns at the end of each line. Varying lines lengths are no longer a problem.
Checklist for Exercise 8-4
Checklist Prior to E-mailing List
1.Right Message for the Right List: Verify that the message is customized and the correct list is
being used.
2.Valuable Content: Is the content-to-promotion ratio high? Will your recipients be glad they
Lesson 8 Pg. 14