I learned an invaluable lesson yesterday.

This is for all the VA’s out there and internet marketers.

When posting a newsletter, do not send a newsletter with HTML!

I spent a lot of time yesterday working on a newsletter for a client that insists on sending a HTML newsletter. I have tried to suggest that she do a plain text newsletter on numerous occasions. But as she is the client I do as she asks.

When I sent the newsletter to her and myself it looked different on her screen and mine. On my screen it was exactly as I formatted in, on hers, well let’s just say it looked horrible.

I don’t know enough about HTML to know why that happens, but apparently it has to do with screen resolution and so on.

I spoke with my mentor Joan Stewart, aka, The Publicity Hound, and she quoted a few pages from Tom Antion’s ebook “Click”.

Here are a few points that he makes regarding the cons of sending a HTML newsletter:

• “You will clearly lose readers who either cannot read HTML, don’t want HTML because of the larger file size, or aren’t allowed to receive HTML emails because of corporate restrictions.”
• “It’s much more work for you to prepare HTML emails and make them look good.”
• “HTML file sizes are usually bigger than an equivalent text based newsletter so some people will resist subscribing because they must pay for download time and file transfer amounts.”
• “HTML newsletters are more difficult to forward and frequently get corrupted in the process. This means you’ll lose recommendations because the person receiving the forward either can’t read it, or it looks so terrible they don’t want to read it.”

And here is the main point:

• “Myself included and all of the people I know who make more than 1 million a year on the Internet will not use HTML email. . . . Now doesn’t that tell you something?”

I hope it tells you something as well.