E-Mail Marketing

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How to Format E-Mail Newsletters, Part 1 Dr. Ralph F. Wilson Web Marketing Today - Dec 9, 2008

I've been publishing an e-mail newsletter or e-zine since 1995 and have learned a thing or two about formatting -- usually from my own mistakes. In this article I'll be talking about e-mail newsletters, but the same principles apply to all business e-mails that are sent out to customers, including transactional e-mails. Let me start from the top of the newsletter and work down, pointing out as we go e-mail formatting best practices.

1. Give Recipients a Reason to Open

While the Subject: field isn't exactly formatting, it is the single most important line in your entire newsletter. Unless your subject line interests your reader, they'll often pass your e-mail by without opening -- even if they know you. Time is short. The question that the subject line must answer is "What's in It for Me?" How will this e-mail benefit your recipient, your subscriber, your customer?

I strongly recommend personalizing the subject line to include the recipient's name. I know that some spammers do this. But they do it precisely because a personalized subject line dramatically increases the open rate. Seeing your name stops your eye long enough to consider the e-mail more carefully.

Nearly all modern e-mail programs enable you to insert fields into your e-mail, but you'll need to capture your subscriber's name during the subscription process. Won't asking for a name decrease the number of people who complete the subscription process? Some. But I'm convinced that using the person's name is important to the process of building a relationship -- and that's what e-mail newsletters can do exceedingly well.

2. Identify the Sender Consistently

When your recipients are sorting through their e-mail inboxes -- discarding junk and deciding what to open -- they'll look at two fields: the Subject Line and the From: field. If they don't recognize the sender, chances are they'll delete the e-mail without reading further.

Always make clear who the newsletter or business e-mail is from. Using only an e-mail address as the sender is the mark of a novice. The sender needs to be some person or organization that your recipient recognizes. For a long time my newsletters were sent from "Dr. Ralph F. Wilson." More recently, the From: field is "Web Marketing Today." Chose as sender the most recognizable name in your organization.

This field must be consistent. Don't switch from one sender to another. What you're trying to do here is build recognition, so when recipients see the sender, they'll open the e-mail because they have come to value your content. On the other hand, if you don't really offer value to the recipient, your name will become a reason to delete the e-mail.

3. Select HTML -- Most of the Time

You'll need to choose between formatting your newsletter in HTML or plain text. For the most part, the text e-mail letters I receive come from "old school" senders who cut their teeth on e-mail before HTML was available. Newer senders almost always use HTML -- and for good reason.

HTML e-mails offer several advantages:

• Click-through rates are perhaps twice that of text e-mails.
• Tracking codes can be used in links to help you determine effectiveness of your e-mail offers. Such codes make the URL too long to display in a text newsletter.
• Attractiveness and readability are enhanced with color, graphics, and font choices. Yes, there's a downside here, but we'll discuss that later.
• Product pictures and formatting make HTML a natural vehicle for retailers to send out a mini-catalog of sale items.

Text e-mails offer other advantages:

• Universal readability. Text-only e-mail programs had about died out. But with the advent of cell phones as an e-mail platform, that's changed.
• Consistency. Many large corporations and government agencies routinely strip out HTML to protect against viruses, so HTML e-mails will be viewed by end-users in unpredictable ways. If you want it to look exactly as you intended, text is the way to go.
• Preference. Some readers prefer plain text over HTML, perhaps because they have a cell phone or work for a large organization. In my subscription forms I pre-check HTML, but find that about 15% select "plain text" anyway.
• A slightly higher delivery rate is available with text only messages, since bare HTML is considered more likely to be spam. For this reason I always send my HTML e-mails combined with text as "multi-part MIME" rather than sending HTML by itself.

E-mail best practice is to let your subscriber select the format. Since I format a text version of every e-mail for the multi-part MIME version, it's not much more difficult to send a text-only version to those who request it.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Dr. Ralph F. Wilson founded Web Marketing Today in 1995, helping to train an entire generation of Internet marketers. He is the author of more than a dozen books. All of his Internet marketing e-books are available for download with a $49.95 annual subscription to Web Marketing Today Premium, a $300 value.