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Newsletters in Plain Text or HTML - Which Work Better

A common question asked when you first set out to write an email newsletter is whether it should be a plain text email or HTML (web page style). This is an important consideration since your choice impacts on how many people read your newsletter and how they respond to it. Let’s look at the obvious pros and cons of each format.

HTML Emails

THE GOOD

• Interactive - active elements can be inserted into emails limited only by what email clients can handle. May include movies, games, surveys or any active content.
• Metrics - Code can be placed into emails to provide detailed statistics on whether your email newsletters are read, for how long and which links are clicked and followed.
• Formatting can be controlled to the finest details including fonts, spacing, and design.

THE BAD

• Creating HTML emails take a lot of time and technical proficiency.
• Not everyone has an HTML capable email client in which case you will be excluding some people.
• Your basic message may be lost by the excessive content and “eye candy”.
• The range of options available in HTML are extensive and can lead to what I call “TMOS” - Too Many Options Syndrome, which is the antithesis of the concept “KISS” - Keep It Simple Stupid. TMOS can stop you from functioning efficiently because you are bogged down with how many things you could do, you end up doing nothing.

Plain Text Emails

THE GOOD

• Easier to create - just type words.
• Less chance of formatting problems making the email display incorrectly.
• Less chance of a SPAM filter blocking the mail.
• Message will be easily digested by the reader provided you write it well.
• No distractions from graphics or over stimulation from too much content competing for attention.
• You sell with words, the most powerful sales tool available on the web if used correctly.

THE BAD

• Harder to capture statistics.
• Hyperlinks may not be active (most text based email clients convert HTTP links to clickable but some still don’t).
• Limited to text to convey your message.
• No multimedia can be included.

Why Do You Have a Newsletter?

Let’s cut to the chase here. Why do you have a newsletter? If you are running an Internet business your newsletter functions as a customer retention tool, sending out periodic reminders to pull your prospects/customers back to your site. Newsletters themselves also function as a direct sales tool. It doesn’t matter if you are selling affiliate products, your own products, a service or information, your newsletter is meant to do one thing - illicit a response from its audience.

In order for your newsletter readers to feel compelled enough to take action your newsletter must clearly state it’s message AND create enough of a pull, usually via emotional tugging, to get the reader to do something. The same rules that apply to websites and copywriting apply to newsletters except you have even less time to convince your reader to do something.

Newsletters fall into the domain of email, the most popular web activity. Email is mainstream, it has penetration and people of all ages and backgrounds know how to use it. Consequently the learning curve is a little higher and your readership knows how to at least complete the basic functions with email. This means that they are quite capable of giving each email about 1 seconds worth of attention before clicking that delete button. That’s not a lot of time to convince them that your email is worth reading.

Should I use Plain Text or HTML Newsletters?

In my opinion, plain text should be your choice for email newsletter format. Why? Because of the numbers. Email newsletters are a form of direct response marketing and in direct response marketing the numbers matter.

From the point of view of a small business owner with limited time and resources you want to maximise the results you get from your newsletters. You want a lot of responses to whatever your newsletter is trying to do. You should be able to easily test different copy and see which works best so you can maximise the numbers. It’s all about the numbers…

Your newsletter must hit the reader quickly and compel them to read on. Any delays or presentation errors are going kill your chance of capturing the attention of the reader. While plain text emails are not immune to display errors (more on this later) they are a lot more likely to be digested by the reader even if things don’t format exactly how you want them to.

A plain text email is more likely to reach a larger amount of people than a HTML email simply because plain text is more compliant to standards. Plain text emails are less likely to be blocked by SPAM filters. Plain text emails will display immediately, there are no download times waiting for graphics to finish loading. Plain text emails are more likely to display properly regardless of what email client your subscribers use. All this adds up to plain text emails being read more often…better numbers…see a pattern here?

Words Sell

Bells and whistles are nice. Interactive toys and flashy lights and sounds are great. But ultimately it’s words that sell. If you write compelling newsletter copy aimed at your target audience that have been carefully selected by the methods used to acquire newsletter sign-ups, you have the perfect vehicle to illicit a response using words that sell. Why dilute your message by wrapping it within colours and images or overstimulating your readers by providing too much information when a few paragraphs can create your desired results more effectively.

Why Not Use Both Plain Text and HTML?

Good idea! If you have the resources and skills to produce a quality HTML and plain text newsletter then by all means offer both to your audience and let them nominate which they prefer, or better still have the email automatically display the appropriate format by detecting what type of email client they have. If you offer both be sure to test to make sure it’s worthwhile. Are more people responding to plain text emails? Well in that case send everyone plain text.

In my case I’m a small business owner and I’m going to be writing the newsletters myself. I do not have time nor the skills to create a new HTML webpage for every newsletter I produce. I could perhaps have a nice standard template designed which I use for newsletters but as I wrote above, I believe that is a waste of time. Words sell, so I’ll focus on creating emotionally compelling words for my newsletters rather than waste time trying to get a box to align right correctly.

Tips for Better Plain Text Newsletters

TELL A FRIEND

Remember how I talked about the numbers? Your efforts should be focused on ensuring the maximum number of people are exposed to your email so your emotionally compelling and convincing newsletter can work it’s magic. This doesn’t have to be limited to just your newsletter subscribers — your subscribers can be turned into evangelists for your newsletter. Make it easy for your subscribers to forward your newsletter on to friends and associates - suggest it to them at the end of the newsletter. Of course for this work you better be creating a damn interesting newsletter.

WORD WRAPPING

Plain text can format incorrectly and one of the most common problems is line breaks. Either lines breaking too early causing your sentences to look
disjointed and
clumsy, or no line breaks at all, causing one of those nasty horizontal scrollbars to appear and your reader to read off the page to finish a sentence. The screen resolution of your subscribers computers can also impact how your text wraps causing these problems.

You can’t control the monitor resolution of your readers or what email client they use, all you can do is try and account for as many variables as possible. To compensate for this problem you have to set a characters-per-line limitation. I’ve researched into newsletter formatting and different people give different suggestions, from 68 characters per line to 63. I’ve decided to recommend to you the round number of 60 characters per line. This will give you nice compact paragraphs made up of nice compact sentences that are likely to avoid most word wrapping (or lack thereof) problems your readers might experience. On extremely high resolutions there will be a lot of white space and your email might look like one big long tower of text but that’s still a lot better than broken sentences or horizontal scrollbars and won’t be too common a problem.

How To Set Characters Per Line Limitations

You didn’t think I would tell you what to do without giving you practical advice on how to do it would I?! Of course not.

Format Text provided by Web-Source.net will handle email newsletter formatting to any character width you specify. Better still it can even undo the current character spacing on any text you have so it’s definitely a tool worth book marking.

Newsletters Are An Important Tool For Your Online Business

Many of the most successful Internet entrepreneurs are wealthy because they have massive (10,000+) lists of highly targeted subscribers that they have been building for years. One well written affiliate product email to a good list can create thousands of dollars of sales and you don’t even supply the product.

Better still once you have a solid list you can contact similar focused online marketers and carefully select the right cross promotional activities that can double your exposure with one email to their list. Of course you have to have your own list to make available for cross promotions before you can expect to work with other people - the smart/persistent/rich help each other to get richer.

Even if you are using your newsletter as a step in the conversion process to generate sales of your own products or services it’s a wise to stay up to date on good newsletter management techniques. By focusing on the numbers you can maximise direct responses that will lead to more sales as visitors become prospects and prospects become clients.

By Yaro Starak
http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

Do you want to profit from your own successful home based Internet business?

Learn from Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia. He works part time from home on several web based business that generate between $2,000 and $8,000 per month. Get your free articles and audio now - visit his Internet Business Blog.

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Don’t Let the Internet Over Stimulate Your Mind

It seems we have to become aware of a new problem that is starting to invade our modern, industrial society, that being the problem of over stimulation. The Internet is an excellent tool but we have to remember that the mind is the most valuable tool imaginable. Some would argue that spirit or soul is of equal or more importance, I am not disagreeing with these people. The point that I am attempting to put forward for discussion is that although the Internet is an excellent new medium that can affect nearly all aspects of life in a positive way, like all things in existence it too has a shadow side. Over stimulation of the mind is a huge cloud in the blue sky of consciousness.

Have you ever sat at your desk searching through the Web for News information, then checking your emails with their accompanying attachments and links, and then doing general searches for random information? If you receive newsletters, or subscribe to blogs, you read these daily as well. The human mind is powerful, and scientists say that we only use an average of 10 % of it, but doesn’t that entail that we should be careful not to overload its present information processing capabilities?

I’ve read that in one New York Times newspaper there is more information to digest than one would have had to process in a whole lifetime of the Shakespearean era. With the advent of the Internet we have more access to knowledge and opinion than ever previously. We have to be cautious my friends. I personally have had to come to the realization that my spiritual, mental, physical and emotional health is of more importance than all other things in life. If I work too hard, or try to read too much, my mind starts to weigh down with all the thoughts that are produced with each and every tidbit of communication that I take in. After a while I sometimes feel like there is a giant cloud inside my mind and I no longer feel confident to do the daily activities that are required of me as a committed team player of our society.

So what’s the solution? Well, like all things in life solutions are often more simple than we could ever have hoped for. We just have to keep our eyes open to grasp the answers that are presented to us as opportunities everyday. Make a note when you are feeling bogged down and tired and think about how much information you have tried to compute in that moment. Give yourself time limits and a designated number of searches and downloads for a day. You can learn to take more breaks and find anecdotal means to sift through the information, or even block out all the stimuli in that break period.

Gardening, meditation, stretches, breathing exercises, tai chi, yoga, cooking, sports, music…all of these are options to undertake when you want to get away from the noise of too many ‘voices’.

The Internet is an awesome idea that has come to fruition. Like all tools and mediums of interaction it must be used mindfully, with care for the user as first priority. You would never use a power saw without gloves, boots, and ear and eye protection. You could lose a finger…you’ve heard the horror stories. Well the Internet hasn’t really been around long enough for too many stories to be circulating, and I think its negative effects could be more subtle than my example, but the case at hand is that we must be very careful how we interact with the world around us.

If we are all walking the streets with giant nebulous nimbus clouds in our minds, there is bound to be trouble.

Jesse S. Somer is an Internet writer who believes that the best ways to surf the Web are on the tiny ripples of a placid clear lake. http://www.m6.net

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Search Engine Marketing Ethics Don’t Believe The Hype

Getting to the top of the search engines, and staying there, is an ongoing process. This does not mean it is expensive to stay at the top. In fact, in most cases, it’s rather affordable. But beware, there are pitfalls along the way to search engine Zen.

The old adage, “If it sounds too good to be true”, applies to SEO (search engine optimization). There are many companies that will promise top results using less than ethical methods. Including slick salesmen that will convince you that all the top sites cheat the search engines in order to stay on top. You will run into web site owners that mask keywords to get top positions making it sound very tempting to follow in their foot steps.

Don’t be fooled by such hype. These are short term solutions that can lead to a permanent ban in the top engines. Once you are banned in Google, Yahoo, MSN or ASK, you may as well dump your site and start over. If you’re looking for long term success on the internet, don’t cheat the search engines.

One of the cheats I have been seeing lately is masking content with “noscript tags”. The noscript tags are used to define an alternate content (text) if a script is NOT executed. People have been taking advantage of this and filling it with content that visitors don’t see, but the search engines do. While this does work, it is short term and believe me when I say, you will be caught. You will have no warning, no second chances. You will wake up one day and your site will not be found.

There is no phone number to call, your emails go unanswered, and traffic to your site drops off overnight. Your income dries up and it’s all over. It can take six months or more to undo the damage and, in some cases, it’s permanent. The major search engines are always on the lookout for new cheats. When found, they will program the search engines to drop the sites using these methods. Without warning, you’re gone. Also, don’t forget, your competition watches your site and is looking for ways to rank higher than you. Your competition may report your unethical methods to the search engines.

If you’re planning to be around for the long haul and want some success on the internet, then you need to be ethical in your promotion. Unless you have daily time dedicated to studying SEO and making the needed changes, you should contract with a reputable SEO company. You need a company that studies the SEO industry on a daily basis to keep on top of what it takes to rank at the top for the long run. A company that is above cheats and quick fixes. A company that offers solid optimization that can keep you on top of the search engine results. A company that will take the time to target your specific audience to get you visitors that are interested in your product or service.

Many SEO companies will promise thousands of visitors a day. Unless those visitors are interested in what you have to offer or ended up at your site and did not find what they searched for, they will remember you. They will remember that you did not have what they wanted. They may leave disappointed and your good name will have a black mark next to it. Don’t get sucked into damaging your image by slick salesmen.

When looking for a company to handle your SEO, first and foremost, be comfortable with the people you will be directly working with. They will need total access to your web site and server to make the needed changes. At times, the verbiage of your site may need minor changes. A word or two may need to be changed to improve keyword density. You need a company you can trust with your company’s image.

In today’s business world, you must have a web site. After all, your competition does. Your site must be marketed ethically and monitored daily. Changes must be made ASAP when conditions change. Hire a professional to handle SEO. When your business is booming, it’s too easy to put SEO on the back burner. Before you know it, your rankings will have dropped from top to bottom, as well as your bottom line.

About the Author:

Mark Hochhaus co-owner of Technet Internet Marketing has been developing web sites and optimizing for search engines since the early days of the Internet. To keep abreast of his latest articles, visit: Technet’s SEO News Blog: The Optimizer

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