Five Plus Ways To Improve Plain Text Emails

When sending your email marketing campaigns, newsletters or ezines in HTML format it is important to send a plain text alternative message. Some email clients and programs can’t or wont receive HTML email so you need to have an option for those subscribers. Most reputable list management companies offer text/HTML options with a single send. You simply create your message in both formats and they’ll get the right format to the right people.

There are several reasons many email marketers prefer to send in text format altogether rather than offer a HTML option. Most spam is sent in HTML so it’s easier for a HTML email to get caught up in the spam filters. Text loads faster and there is no worry about about a third party server preventing the email from displaying correctly due to slow image connections or dead links.

I’m not trying to get you to forget about HTML formats, I’m here to help make your text versions look better, work better and click better. Just because it’s plain text doesn’t mean it needs to be plain. Structure and outline are very important parts of plain text emails. No one will sit and read through a huge paragraph of words running into one another without some kind of structure.

1. Line Breaks - Line breaks are especially important in plain text emails. Most email programs wont or aren’t able to display long lines of text so they force line breaks where necessary. These forced carriage returns cause the email content to look sloppy and unprofessional. AWeber recommends a line-length of about 60-70 characters (including spaces) in text emails.

The following line length is 65 characters:
{===============================================================}

2. Content List - When sending a newsletter with content an organized subject list (table of contents) can be very helpful. This gives you the ability to ’sell’ your key points at the beginning of the message. A content list can indirectly increase click though rates by encouraging the subscriber to keep reading.

Taken from Adrian Jock

3. Readable Headers - It’s a mistake to allow headers to blend with the e-mail’s content. Finding ways to highlight your headers (subject lines) makes your message more readable and appealing.

Taken from Fauzi Omar

4. Bulleted Lists - Using bullet points in HTML emails and web content can be a powerful enhancement. It highlights the covered content while making it easier to digest. Text email can not display bulleted lists but we can improvise with the use of spaces and characters such as the asterisk (*).

Taken from Willie Crawford

5. Line breaks - Many marketers and publishers use line breaks to effectively display headers, links and to highlight specific content.

=> => => => => => => => => => => =>

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

=============================

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

«»«»«»<<>>«»«»«»«»«»«»<<>>«»«»«»

PLUS - Spaces and Indentations – Spaces can clean up email content and make it much more readable. White space is important in email message and web content alike. There are many different and creative line breaks in use, just check your inbox.

So make it a point to take a few extra minutes to improve the text version of your next email. Your list will appreciate and so will your profit margin.

Need a reliable email marketing solution? I use AWeber

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 6th, 2009 and is filed under Headline. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

eZinePress.com
Your Ezine News Source and Commentary