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Dec 6

The New Year is a great time to renovate your email campaigns. Whether you have new products to promote or news to celebrate with your customers, a new template can catch your readers’ attention and highlight the message of your new campaigns.

If you have not been utilizing email templates in your email campaigns yet, the New Year is also an opportune moment to implement these advertising strategies in an existing campaign. At Email Template Pro, you can find several templates for free download. Check out the “Monthly Newsletter Template” or “Product Showcase Template.” These templates can be easily adapted for any type of business or message and are customizable—add images, links, text, etc.  The result will be engaging, colorful, eyecatching email messages that will bring your product right to your customer.

If you find the free templates effective or are looking for new template packages, many sites online have template packages available. Email Template Pro has a subscription program, and other Internet companies like StreamSend have a multitude of options that will fit any email campaign. Try something new for the upcoming year; email templates are an easy to implement, affordable advertising technique that can produce great results. 2011 is the time to make a change!

Oct 22

Corporate and private users have been sending emails to their audiences for years, but as they focus on their target issues, their audience undoubtedly shrinks. Some have made the argument that the bigger the audience, the better the results, but many times it depends on the market the email sender is in. If the sender would like to send a large advertisement to his audience, direct email marketing is one of the easiest approaches. After segmenting customers through research and software, senders can personalize the email to make address it to that specific individual instead of making it look like they targeted an entire third party.

As CRM points out, the way in which you use the direct email marketing technique can make or break your campaign. Audiences don’t want a message that is stamped with all capital letters in the subject line or layered with hypertext in every sentence. Messages must be creative and professional to maintain the recipient’s interest. To research the statistics of successful emails, audiences must be narrowed to only the target group so that numbers are not wasted.

Direct email marketing is hard work and time-consuming, but the task pays off in the long run. Continue to use your intellect and intuition to determine who your audience is and what they’ll want next. To make the process easier in terms of research, you can sign up for StreamSend. Using this site, you can download predesigned templates, and analyze how effectively your message is being sent by testing it through nine different spam filters.

Jun 25

No matter what kind of email template you are trying to create, the task can be unclear and somewhat difficult. There are several helpful tools located on the web for making email templates. Whether you are a business trying to better reach your customers or just want to make your personal emails brighter, there is an email template perfect for your needs. If you’re wanting to make your templates more customizable, try using HTML for more options.

Dreamweaver makes HTML email templates simple by providing step-by-step instructions. If you are wanting to use plain text for your email templates, there are a few things you need to know. Plain text is useful for those who prefer plain text or people that have an email client where HTML can’t be displayed. Click here for more tips on plain text templates and formatting.

For businesses wanting to more effectively convey products or messages, there are different layouts for each specific purpose. Quick announcements, also referred to as postcard emails, are very simple and brief announcements. Email newsletters build on the existing relationship with the customer. The purpose of an email newsletter is to increase sales, but focus on things the customer may be intrigued by. A catalog email is just the electronic version of an existing product brochure. There is more information and some great tips on this website

Whether you need some help getting started with email templates or you are wanting to further expand your email marketing abilities, StreamSend is the perfect solution. StreamSend can create custom templates specific to your needs to help your business grow. Email templates are a great way to express individuality and add that special touch to your messages.

May 14

When you’re running a business, you need to be prepared with signature email templates for each situation you may encounter through email. It is hard to be prepared for every situation, so choose some “blanket” templates that should go at the end or beginning of each email you send out. Some templates you may consider are basic, general best wishes, and possibly one with a quote.

The basic signature email template should be set up with your name, the name of the business, and your contact information. This looks professional, and it makes it easier for business associates and clients to reach you. You may even want to include a facebook page for your business or your twitter business account. In today’s fast-paced world, you want to make sure you are never out of touch. Each line of contact will help you gain more business.

For emails that require a slightly more personal touch, the “best wishes” template should be considered. This signature email template should be placed at the end of your email. It will indicate well-wishes toward your readers without you needing to worry about being either too impersonal or not being businesslike enough. It’s a great solution for those times when you aren’t quite sure how personal you should be with your email recipients.

Another wonderful email signature template is the quote signature template. You may consider putting your company motto in or just having an uplifting or funny quote to make your readers smile. As long as the quote isn’t offensive to anyone, it’s a great way to add something a little extra to your email.

These three templates cover almost any situation you may encounter in the business world. For more email template help, check out StreamSend. They offer wonderful templates to help you get started. The basic signature email template, best wishes template, and quote template will all be useful to you in your journey to becoming the best in your field.

Aug 20

When should you send a designer made email, and when should you send a good ol’ fashioned plain text email? This question has aroused a massive debate in forums and blogs all over the ‘net in recent years. I’ll give my personal experiences when dealing with both types…

Use an HTML template with…

  • Auto-Responders: Payment notifications, email verifications, and account confirmations all fall under this category. Branding is very important when sending out these types of emails. This could just mean placing your company logo somewhere in the message, accompanied by a simple graphic to separate the heading from the content. But don’t forget to include a footer bar to separate your content from the can-spam compliance information. I’d recommend always using an HTML email template in your automatic response messages.
  • Product Promotions:  When sending out product announcements, promotions, and sales notifications always use a nicely designed HTML email template. These emails should immediately grab the attention of your recipient, hopefully converting into a sale. When you walk in to Best Buy, you don’t see a bunch of plain text ads hanging from the ceilings and pasted to the walls. You see big text with pictures and bright colors. The same rules apply for email marketing. If you’re still using plain old text emails to sell your products you’re missing the boat, big time.
  • Newsletters: In my experience, a well designed HTML email newsletter can be a very profitible marketing tool. Have you ever read a plain text email newsletter? Probably on your email enabled phone, but with the advent of the iPhone your emails can now look just as great on mobile devices as they do on your computer screen. I can’t stress enough how profitable a carefully crafted newsletter can be to your email marketing campaign.

email marketing templates

Use plain text with…

  • Sensitive Information: This mainly applies to companies dealing with money, and other sensitive information such as banks, and stock traders. Always leave these emails as plain text as there is less of a risk it will be flagged as spam. When I receive my weekly bank statement via email, I’d be discouraged to see bright colors and graphics next to my sensitive account information.
  • Internal Business Communications: If you think that pretty background with colorful text is going to impress your fellow co workers in an important email, well, think again! Always send plain text emails when communicating with co-workers internally via company email. This practice is normally frowned upon, and many companies even have policies on proper email usage and mailbox disk space usage. Play it safe with this one, keep it simple so you can keep your job.
  • External Business Communications: Unless you’re a business to business email marketer, you should not be sending HTML emails to your company’s business partners. This could potentially hinder important business relationships, and make your company look less professional. Again please refer to your specific company policies, and if it is not mentioned in the policies, always play it safe and just send it plain text.

Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas about these, or any category I may have missed via comments.

Aug 19

Here is a topic troubling email marketers, template designers, and business owners since its pitiful release. Outlook 2007 is beyond frustrating for all of us, why? If you’re asking why, allow me to introduce you to the most unpredictable aspect of email marketing:

Email Rending Problems.

Outlook 2007 has essentially gone back in time to the year 2000, crippled with multiple email rendering issues and stripped of its credibility among email marketing professionals.

html email templates

When an upgrade is released for a software program, it is supposed to be a step up from the previous version…hence the word “upgrade”,…Right?! Many people claim Outlook 2007 is anything but an upgrade. Apart from it’s painstakingly slow loading time, and bulky user interface, Outlook ’07 is destroying beautiful HTML emails worldwide! As a direct result, Outlook 2007 is rapidly driving up email template prices. I wouldn’t blame the template price increase on sheer frustration, but rather on of the extra time it takes an email designer/developer to get their email to render properly in Microsoft’s  Outlook 2007

As an email marketer/template designer you need to be constantly ‘digging’ for email compatibility issues and solutions.

3 Must Haves For All Email Marketers:

Outlook 2007 Email Validator

This goes out to Microsoft: Please release an HTML email rending PATCH for Outlook 2007!

Wishful thinking but hey, who knows? In the mean time, Microsoft has created this HTML and CSS validation tool which will “validate” your HTML email template for use in Outlook 2007.

Although it doesn’t correct all rendering issues this tool is great for email code validation.

Conditional Comments

What an awesome discovery. Sitepoint has hit the nail right on the head with this article on conditional comments. Conditional comments essentially tell Outlook 2007 “well, since you are completely unable to render my beautiful email template, follow this alternate set of instructions so you render properly”.

eCommerce Times

An introduction to the differences between Outlook 2003 and 2007. This detailed article boasts an excellent case study. It shows the same email in Outlook 2003, then in 2007 and explains the differences between the two.

If you know of any other tips or tricks that aren’t listed, feel free to add your comments.