Messaging Etiquette

We talk so much about writing the right kind of email messages to your prospective customers whom you have got, or in the process of getting on your opt in list. Now, let us see what goes into making a good email message. This is relevant because the appearance of your content matters in the online marketing business. To look at the various steps involved in getting your message ready to send to your customer:

Composing Your Message

Use WordPad or notepad. Preferably only have 65 characters in each line of text that you write. You must break the line manually after this limit because most email clients have their default set to 65 characters when the message opens. Now if your message exceeds this limit, its very aggravating to have to scroll horizontally and see the entire mail as one long line! It is equally irritating to see emails that have unevenly laid out lines. Looks very untidy and gives the impression that you don’t care about how your messages look. Since none of us want to create that impression, this simple precaution can take care of that.

Making Your Message Personal

Think about how you feel when you are addressed as Dear Subscriber, and how you feel when you are addressed as Dear (your name). You can easily handle this through your autoresponder – getting it to fill in subscriber’s name in the email addressed to them, as if you are writing the email especially for them. Also, use their name at various appropriate places in the message – like “Did you know, (name)”, as if you are actually speaking with them.

You are aiming to build your lists and simultaneously starting to build a relationship with your list. So when you care enough to personalize the email to them, they will also feel comfortable about approaching you, and building a rapport.

Layout Of The Ezine/Message

Every message starts with a title or subject. If your email is an ezine, give it a catchy name and include the name of the publisher, URL links, issue number, etc. This will inform your recipient about where it is coming from and identify you. Readers like to recognize who it is right away to encourage them to read on further.

Listing The Contents

Can you imagine this ebook without a table of contents and the page numbers of each? Just think about having to search for something without a clear idea of what the ebook contains. The title alone is not sufficient. To enable your reader know exactly what to expect, build a table of contents with a list of everything you have included in your email/ezine, so that they not only find you organized, but find it easy to browse through.

Proofreading

This one is obvious. We can’t ever imagine reading an ezine or email full of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. We form a negative impression of the sender. It looks like they did not bother about what the reader might think. It is always necessary to send out quality content to your prospects. Make sure you check spellings and grammar, or get someone to check them. Send them out only when you are sure they are free of errors. Check every link to see if it works, if you are providing any. It can be annoying to the reading to click through a link, only to find that it does not work because of a simple error in the link. You will just end up losing a member.

Check To See If You Are Spamming

There are certain standards to follow to check whether your message is spam free. Ensure that you are aware of them and do not use keywords classified as spam. This will not only get your messages filtered, but you will reported as spam and spoil your credibility.

Can You Use HTML In Your Emails?

Most ezines offer the option of receiving them as text or email version, according to the receiver’s preference. HTML can make your ezine look very good. But there are email clients who just don’t display these. All that time and effort in creating a jazzy ezine just goes waste. If your subscriber has low Internet bandwidth, they may or may not have the patience to wait till the page loads. What to do? Make both, and give your contacts the option of whether they want HTML or plain text emails. Many people prefer text emails, while some prefer HTML. The advantage of your HTML version is that you can put it on your website and make it look great. You can also give the text version a link to the HTML version – which gives your contacts the choice to click and see. Helps in improving your page ranking as well.

Include A Quote For The Day

It is nice to see a relevant quote by a famous person that is related to the content of the message. This can add to the emphasis on your theme.

Original Content

This is always a plus point. It helps in relationship building. When you write your own original content, your personality just comes through in your words.

Does It Work?

The only way to find out is to try it on yourself. Do this: send the emails to yourself first. Try clicking all the links on a variety of email clients to take care of any possible glitch. After all the hard work, you don’t want your contacts to have a problem reading your email or ezine, do you? Online marketing is all around your optin list. Give it the respect and consideration it deserves.