Email Marketing Tools You Will Need
As you probably know by now, your auto responder requires that your marketing messages be in a specific format. There is a very good reason for this formatting requirement. That reason is that not all email programs are created equally.
Some email programs will scramble lines of text that are longer than the prescribed 65 characters. What your members get is an email that is mostly just gibberish. Some email programs accept only plain text mail. That means that your message must be made up of only ASCII characters.
ASCII characters are those that you see on your keyboard. When email programs that only support ASCII script are presented with characters that they don’t recognize, they often do strange things. A quatation mark, for example, might be sent as the number ‘0’.
A program comes build right in on your computer when you buy it that will produce text in only ASCII characters. It’s your ‘NOTE PAD’ program.
Notepad is not to be confused with Word Pad. They are two different programs. In order to meet the ASCII character requirement of your auto responder, type your email messages in your note pad program.
You can type them in another program first, if you wish and then copy and paste them onto a note pad document. All formatting will be removed by the note pad program and all characters will be ASCII. You will then still have to shorten your lines to 65 characters.
There is a free program that you can download from the Internet at http://www.notetab.com/ called Note Tab.
This program will produce type in only ASCII characters and will also allow you to format your line length. There is a free basic program on the site. Additionally, you will find some programs that have added features that you might well find useful enough to merit spending a few bucks to get. Note Tab Light is under $5 and worth a lot more because of the formatting ease it provides.
Another point of correct formatting for auto responders is that full URL’s must be used rather than be word-wrapped. As we all know, some URL’s are monstrous…especially affiliate links. They require many lines. That turns into a problem but there is a solution. Long URL’s can be reduced to simple URL’s at http://tinyurl.com/.
In order to achieve the formatting requirements set forth by your auto responder you need to use the correct tools. The tools that you should use are:
1. Either the note pad program on your computer or the Note Tab software.
2. The URL reducing program that you can find at Tiny URL.