A: To get your e-mail campaigns to succeed, you will need to follow these three basic rules of e-mail writing so that you do not offend or turn your readers off. Using these techniques can help you succeed in making more sales through your e-mail marketing than you have before.

Let’s get down to the rules of writing your e-mails.

Rule One: Use Line Wraps.

When writing your e-mails you should use the line wraps set at least 65 characters or less. There are two reasons to do this. The first reason is that some e-mail clients have their line wrap automatically set at 60 to 65 characters when messages are being received. So if your e-mail is set at more than 65 characters, your e-mail will be chopped up when it is received.

This will cause your e-mail to appear chopped up, ugly, and hard to read when the receiver opens it on their end. The second reason is that with a short sentence span, it makes it easier for your mail recipients to read. Also, you will be able to keep the attention of your readers for a longer period of time.

Rule Two: Setting up your line wraps.

You can set up your line wraps in your favorite word processing program by doing the following:

Type 65 characters across your page with no spaces.

Set the margin on the right at the end of the last character.

Delete the characters that you used to set the right margin.

You will need to save your document with a name that you will remember. It will be easier for you to find when you need to write your e-mails. Your right margin is always set at the proper width by saving your document.

Avoid using too many capital letters, exclamation points, and other various punctuation marks—this is considered “shouting” on the Internet. The occasional shouts of particular words are okay, but limit your use.

Rule Three: Watch Your Grammar and Spelling.

You should always proofread your e-mails before you send them out.. Every word processing program has a proofreader (spelling/grammar checks) listed in your tools menu. There is often a thesaurus available as well.

By setting up your e-mails this way, you will convey a professional image of honesty, integrity, and credibility with your readers.

Q: What should I avoid when formatting my e-mails?

A: I will now talk about the do’s and don’ts of fonts, colors, hyperlinks, and signature files in your e-mails.

Fonts & Colors

Don’t use color fonts in your e-mails. Using a colorful background or colorful text fonts should never be used when you are writing a business e-mail. Using colors in the text of your e-mail is very distracting to your readers and hard on the eyes.

It’s always black and white. Using black text on a white background is always the best route to take for writing your e-mails. You will then have the full attention of your readers.
Fonts Matter. Use a commonly used font when writing your e-mails. The most common font used and read by everyone is Times New Roman, since this font is the same type of font used by book publishers. The next two most common types are Arial and Courier New.

Bells & Whistles

Do not use flashing buttons or banners in your e-mails. If your readers wanted bells and whistles, they would be playing their favorite games online instead.
e-mail Hyperlinking

Be sure to use hyperlinks in your e-mails to make it easy for your readers to get to the site(s) or e-mail addresses that you are promoting. This is how you get your readers to view your site and to purchase your products.

Warning: AOL doesn’t like to show links properly in their e-mails, especially when it comes to e-mail address. There is a way to fix this problem.

Simply type mailto: in front of your e-mail address without the space. Just add the colon and your e-mail address to the words so you get mailto:youre-mailaddress.com (or .net or whatever).

If you choose to add a link to your site, add it in the proper place in the text of your e-mail AOL users will need to write it in html format.

For example:

<a href=”http://www.iahbe.org”>http://www.iahbe,org</a>

Be sure to let them know that if they cannot click on the link to copy and paste it into their browser.

Signature Tags

The use of signature tags in your e-mails is critical. A signature tag is a 3 to 6 block of lines of text added at the bottom of your e-mails that tells a short bit about your products with the link to the site that goes out with every message.

To add a signature line to your messages, open your e-mail program. Locate your tools/options menu, type in your headline, a short ad or byline, and the URL to your site plus any other contact information you want to include.

Next time, I will cover how to hunt down and capture your e-mail leads, so be prepared to go a-hunting and do some work.