Formatting Your Email Newsletter
by Art Fedich
So, you’re email newsletter is ready to go. You have all the insightful
content and clever promotions your reader could ever hope for, now all you
have to do is deliver it to them. Well, here is the tricky part. Even
though you might have the most useful information possible, if your
newsletter is formatted incorrectly, no one will read it.
When your subscriber gets your newsletter in their “inbox” a number of things can quickly deter the reader from actually reading it. Truncated lines (when you’re copy is spaced incorrectly and the carriage return leaves gaps in the paragraphs), confusing table of contents or none at all, and, no discernable way to separate new articles are the main problems most email newsletters run into.
The truncated sentences are an easy fix. Some email clients (Hotmail, Yahoo) set a specific line length and if you go over that they will truncate your sentences. Just set your line length to no more than 60 characters per line and you should eliminate the problem. Always have a clear table of contents of all your articles/content at the very top of your newsletter, since that’s what your readers look at to see if their valuable time is worth spending on your newsletter.
If they don’t know or can’t easily figure out
what information is valuable to them in your newsletter, it’ll quickly
find its way into the trash bin. Finally, always separate your articles
content with a clear and discernable sign. Either make the heading all
capital letters, or use parenthesis or asterisks to call attention to an
article. This will make each article easy to find and make it a quicker
and less frustrating read for your subscribers.