Display Your Email Newsletter Perfectly With HTML

HTML formatted email can look just like a web page. We’re talking everything from layout, graphics, active links, colorful fonts, interactive form, charts you name it. Combined, this allows the customer to interact with the brand and its identity in a way that no other medium can offer. Needless to say Outlook Express, Netscape Communicator, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo and most popular email clients support HTML also.

Used properly graphics and visual imagery in ads can also be more effective. How? One way is through the use of related technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets that can better assist you in structuring such concepts as grouping.

Containment is the technique of tying related elements together with in a box. The box can either be visible (with a border or background color of some sort,) or it can be invisible which involves putting your material in close proximity and keeping a moat of while space around the group. Content is then laid out in a way that’s more visually appealing, and much easier to scan and navigate, than plain text email.

Such practices are invaluable when trying to get your most important points across, which isn’t always an easy task especially in terms of email. Grouping is also one of the main tools used by the brain to simplify a complex situation.

Creating an HTML email is simple, there are many advanced mailing list management script such as add2it mailman phplist that make it easier to write send and manage your HTML messages to your list of subscribers. Phplist in particular (which is what I use and recommend all my clients to use) is great for newsletters, publicity lists, notifications, and many other uses.

Phplist also has a built in WYSIWYG HTML editor that allows you to create and view your HTML message even before you send it out, though I prefer using an actual HTML editor like Dreamweaver to create my emails; kind of defeating the purpose you might say yet, I just think phplist is best suited to manage the actual message delivery system itself.

The Multiple List Management feature, for example, is great for if you need to have more than one list (as it lets you assign lists to List Managers, who can manage their users and lists,) likewise the Message Queue ensures that every subscriber gets the email message, and that no subscribers receive two copies of the same message, even if they’re subscribed to more than one list!

Similarly Dreamweaver is better suited to handle HTML as it provides a number of easy ways to display your images and control your text with style sheets in HTML.

Regardless of what HTML editor you choose here’s are few things to remember.

1 - Always use absolute URLS for your graphics (ie http://foamers.net/newsletter/pics/issue2.gif )

2 - Do not save your images as attachments (nobody in their right mind will ever open some strange attachment,) but store them on your web server so that they may display properly in the email.

3 - Send it to yourself before sending it to your subscriber list. And if possible send it to a buddy who has a different email program than you, to be sure most of your subscribers can read it on their computers.

4 - Once your satisfied with your newsletter, save it as a template. Then you can just open the template whenever you want to send html mail and most of the work will be done for you.

5 - If you still feel uncomfortable around HTML I highly recommend that you go on a multimedia or web design course just to get a feel for the fundamentals – and to pick the brains of other Internet entrepreneurs, which is always useful. One way to learn from us right here is simply to subscribe to this feed. And should you wish to have me customize your HTML email template newsletter (at just $180 a pop,) jump over to the contact form and tell me what you think.

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