Your E-zine 13 — A Formatting Checklist

Lee’s Note: Ali Brown has excel­lent ideas for for­mat­ting your mar­ket­ing emails to cus­tomers.  Good emails trans­late to bet­ter response from them and more prof­its for your business.

By Ali Brown

While send­ing out a text e-zine may seem like a piece of cake, there’s more to it than you may think. *Good for­mat­ting* is the name of the game. Here’s a handy check­list I use to make sure each of my issues is in great shape BEFORE I send it out. Please be my guest and use it for yourself!

1. Are all lines 65 char­ac­ters or less?
   More than that and your mis­sive may come through look­ing messy to many sub­scribers. End each line with a hard return by press­ing the “enter” key.
2. Have you made sure there’s no auto-formatting, such as bold­ing, ital­ics, or under­lin­ing?These fea­tures don’t trans­late well in e-mail and can come out look­ing mighty strange on the other end. Instead, empha­size words or phrases with *aster­isks,* “quo­ta­tion marks,” or ALL CAPS … sparingly.
3. Are all sec­tions neatly sep­a­rated?
   Use under­scores (_____), aster­isks (******), another nifty sym­bol ($$$$$, %%%%, @@@@), or a com­bi­na­tion thereof («==») to help define each area and help your read­ers skim your issue more easily.
4. Do all Web links include ‘http://’ before them?
   Some e-mail pro­grams won’t auto­mat­i­cally hyper­link a URL in your text with­out this pre­fix. So don’t take a chance — make it easy for your read­ers to click and link, espe­cially to YOUR site!
5. Do all e-mail links include “mailto:” before them?
   Same idea here: Some e-mail pro­grams won’t auto­mat­i­cally hyper­link an e-mail address in your text with­out it. Be sure to leave no space between the colon and the first char­ac­ter of the address.
6. Is your mast­head at the very top?
   The mast­head, or “name­plate,” typ­i­cally fea­tures your e-zine name, your name, your e-mail address, your Web address, and the cor­rect date, vol­ume num­ber, and issue num­ber. Make it the FIRST thing your read­ers see.
7. Have you reminded your read­ers right away that this is a *sub­scrip­tion* pub­li­ca­tion?
   Don’t let them for­get that they *asked* to receive this! Some­thing like this right under your mast­head will do: “You’ve received this e-zine because you sub­scribed to it! If you wish to unsub­scribe, please scroll to the end for more information.”
8. If you have a table of con­tents (TOC), do its list­ings match this issue’s arti­cles and fea­tures?
   For exam­ple, if your TOC says your sec­ond fea­ture in this issue is an arti­cle on Web site mar­ket­ing, make sure it’s right!
9. Have you included a copy­right notice?
   At the end of your con­tent, before your con­tact info, post ‘©’ imme­di­ately fol­lowed by the year and your name or your company’s name. You should know that a copy­right notice does not pro­tect your ideas — instead, it pro­tects the way you express them.
10. Are the cor­rect adver­tise­ments in place?
    Keep track of all your ad swaps and pur­chases in one main doc­u­ment to make this easy to look up each time. I use an Excel spread­sheet, which works great for me.
11. Do you give clear sub­scribe and unsub­scribe instruc­tions at the bot­tom?
    Include sub­scribe instruc­tions, because your e-zine will likely get passed on to oth­ers who’d like to sign up. The unsub­scribe instruc­tions are just BECAUSE — it’s plain cour­tesy, and the law of the land. : )
12. Does your sub­ject line include both the name of your e-zine and the issue topic?
    By see­ing your e-zine title, your recip­i­ents will know the e-mail is not spam. And by see­ing the issue topic, they will know what’s in store for this issue. Exam­ple: “Sara’s Cash Flow Tips: Increase Your Income Today!”
13. Have you sent a test of the issue to your­self or an asso­ciate?
    Make sure it comes through read­ing well and look­ing great! (Check for any strange sym­bols that mag­i­cally appear, odd breaks in the copy, inac­tive links, etc.) And this is a GREAT time to give it a final proofread.

© 2000–2003 Alexan­dria K. Brown. All rights reserved.

Self-made mul­ti­mil­lion­aire and Inc. 500 CEO Ali Brown is devoted to cre­at­ing finan­cial free­dom for women glob­ally through the power of entre­pre­neur­ship. To learn how to cre­ate wealth and live an extra­or­di­nary life now, reg­is­ter for her free weekly arti­cles at http://www.AliBrown.com

Arti­cle Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ali_Brown
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