When composing an email marketing message or email newsletter, beware. What you see on your computer screen may not be what the recipient will see on his or her monitor. Here’s how to remain from looking like an dumb.
Whichever one of four factors can cause problems: word wrap, font, automated formatting and HTML tags.
1. Word wrap
You might be composing your email marketing message in a word processor or text editor, or in your own electronic mail program, such as Outlook.
But, you can’t be sure what program the recipient is implementing. People and email addresses easily could be reading your communication on a dozen original systems, all of which have their specific quirky ways of displaying messages.
Most email customers will automatically wrap lines at a set number of characters. If the lines in your recent message are longer than tolerable by the recipient’s email client, your message will end up the same this:
You will write a compelling, superbly composed marketing message, however because your lines are too long, the recipient’s email program will cut them off and start annoying
“orphans.” Your email will be challenging to read, and you will look like an dumb!
The solution to this problem is to wrap your own lines at a few practical length, doubtless 60 or 65 characters. Place a return at the end of every line.
2. Font
You might be composing your message in the default font for your word processor or mail program. However you must to realize that the recipient’s email client may be implementing a modern display font. As a result, what they see on their computer screen can be much new from what you see on yours.
For the purpose of this discussion, fonts come in two flavors: proportional and fixed-pitch. With a fixed-pitch font, such as Courier, every character has equal width. With a proportional font, such as Times New Roman, the width of characters can vary. So a sentence typed in Courier will frequently come out longer than one typed in Times New Roman.
This can produce a trouble if you’re relying on characters to set up effects such as lines. Your line may come out also short or too long, depending on the variation between your composition font and the recipient’s display font.
Font width can as well cause problems if you need characters to line up a specific manner — for example if you are creating a table.
This is a problem that’s tricky to work around. The ultimate solution is to maintain things as easy as possible, and look at your message in both proportional and fixed fonts to see if any considerable problems come up. Typically, you are safest if you compose in a fixed font.
3. Automated formatting and HTML tags
A communication composed in a word processing program will possess various out of sight formatting codes, that can show up in abnormal ways if you simply paste the communication into an email window and send it. For example, you can end up with an annoying “=20″ at the end of every line.
Likewise, if you try to send out your message in HTML, various recipients will observe all the HTML tags, making the message hard to read. If you are going to send HTML electronic mail, build certainly that all your recipients are able to receive HTML-formatted email, or that you have technology that can deliver the right format to the right user.
Regularly speaking, you are safer if you to produce a plain-text communication, compose it in a program that produces pure text, such as Notepad. Microsoft Word doesn’t start pure text documents, even if you “Save As …” text.
If you desire to employ Word or an additional word processor to start a text paper, firstly save the document in text, then close it and open it in Notepad (or other text editor). Now save it again in Notepad. Notepad will now save a pure text document, with no formatting. Close the document and re-open it in Notepad. You will now have a authentic text document to send out. Paste this into your email window or Web form to send it out.
In synopsis, to evade formatting problems, take these precautions when creating email messages:
•Set up documents in plain text
•Reduce your lines to 60-65 characters, including spaces, with a tricky return at the end of each line
•Compose in a fixed-pitch font
•View your communication with both proportional and fixed pitch fonts to define any formatting problems
Adrian Faletti is VP of Consumer Realtions for WentMail Email Marketing. He leads a team of specialists who stay on top of the changing web panorama of the Email Marketing and autoresponder world.
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