Become a Home
Based Travel Agent

E-Newsletters and You (Part Two)
By: Tom Ogg

Last month we explored e-newsletters and how you can generate content that will be read and acted upon. This month we will delve into the “how to” aspect of creating an e-newsletter that can be easily opened and read by the recipient. Many of the newsletter templates one can use are so loaded up with graphics and other features that slow the delivery of the final newsletter to the reader that they become ineffective. Besides quality content, speed of delivery of the final newsletter is the next important consideration. Sure that graphical rich environment is beautiful, but does the time it takes to load going to cost you readership?

Textual or HTML e-Newsletters: One of the newsletters that I receive and read with a high priority is a simple textual production. I look forward to the thinking presented in the newsletter and the easy to navigate textual format. It is consistent in its formatting and relevant to the topics that I am interested in. All in all, it is a great newsletter and accomplishes the goal of the newsletter’s publisher quite nicely.

HTML e-newsletters enjoy the benefit of including pictures, graphics, colors and many design features that can enhance the reader’s overall experience. HTML newsletters are very effective in selling travel because of the power of displaying relevant travel oriented pictures and graphics. Effective HTML e-newsletters use color, pictures and/or graphics for maximum impact consistent with the objective of the newsletter without detracting from the delivery of the newsletter to the reader.

Creating a Textual e-Newsletter:  Creating a textual e-newsletter is as simple as creating it in a word processor and saving it as text. Of course, it should be edited so that it conveys your precise message in as few words as possible. There should be no spelling or grammatical errors and it should be paginated for maximum readability.  Always use basic fonts found on all computers and use a minimum of 12-point type. While you may want to use the really cool font that looks great on your newsletter, understand that the reader must also have that specific font on their computer in order for it to display your newsletter the way that you are viewing it. If they don’t, his or her browser will substitute a font it thinks might look good. The results can be disastrous. Once you are satisfied with your textual e-newsletter simply copy and paste it into your list manager’s textual e-newsletter submission page.

Creating a HTML Newsletter: While creating your HTML newsletter could be as simple as using your word processor’s “save as HTML” function, the best tool for creating your e-newsletter is one of the many HTML editors that are available.  You can purchase HTML newsletter templates on the web if you want to easily obtain a professional appearance, however use caution to ensure the template does not contain a lot of graphics that will slow delivery down. If you do not want to use a pre-designed template, creating your own newsletter is easy to do. Here are some ideas that will help you along the way.

Create a Fixed-Width Table to House Your Newsletter: Create a 1-cell table with a fixed width of say, 900 pixels and a height of 0% that is centered on the page. You can select a background color for the area outside of the table that will add some color to set off your newsletter. You can easily format your newsletter within this one cell by adding tables to house your content. By setting a fixed width for your initial table, you guarantee how the newsletter will be seen in various browsers and screen sizes. While the background color area may change with each display, your newsletter will remain the way you want it formatted. Use cell background colors to add more pizaaz to your newsletter without affecting its delivery time at all.

Optimize All Photos and Graphics: Only use optimized .jpegs, .gifs and .pngs. If you are going to use pictures and/or graphics, make sure they are optimized for use on the web. Photos can be optimized in Photoshop Elements by selecting the “save for web” option and graphics can be optimized in Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Image Ready. Including a digital .jpeg photo that has not been optimized will cost you a good amount of readership because of the load speed.

Make Sure That Your Newsletter Photos and Graphics Are Properly Tagged: This is critical for e-newsletter publishers. Nothing is worse than publishing a newsletter only to find out that readers cannot see the picture or graphic (or all of them). The problem is caused because of the way the image is tagged. When an image is inserted into a newsletter using a HTML editor it references the image location on your hard drive. The image appears in the newsletter because it is called up from your hard drive. If you published your newsletter to a website, then the image would automatically be renamed by the HTML editor to reflect its location on the World Wide Web.

Because an e-newsletter is not published as a website, the tag refers to the image on your hard drive. If you sent yourself a test copy of the newsletter, you would see the image because it is calling it from your hard drive. Unfortunately, no one else will be able to see it because it doesn’t reside on his or her hard drive where the tag is looking for it. In order for the image to be seen, you must retag the IMG tag to reflect the image’s address on the Internet. Here is how to do it. If you visit the HomeBasedTravelAgent.com site and click on “news” and then click on January Newsletter and then find the “Recommended By” logo you will be able to its true address on the Internet by right clicking on the logo and selecting “properties”. Following is the tag that my HTML editor shows after I inserted the image as it resides on my hard drive.

<img border="0" src="../../../My%20Pictures/HBTARocommendedLogo.jpg" width="246" height="150">

In order for the image to show up in the e-newsletter, one must change the tag to reflect the true address of the picture or graphic on the Internet. This is easily done by replacing the tag directly after the = character and between the “ and “ characters with the true url of the image on the Internet. In this case, the tag would be modified as follows.

<img border="0" src="http://www.homebasedtravelagent.com/newsletter/HBTARocommendedLogo.jpg" width="246" height="150">

It is necessary to replace the tags for each .jpeg, .gif and .png image in your newsletter, otherwise readers will not be able to see them.