If you've been thinking of sending an email to customers in the run-up Christmas, now is a brilliant time to catch their attention. With pay day finally out of the way and more snow that you can shake a reindeer at – my guess is most people will be getting online this year rather than hitting the shops!
So, just to help you along with that all-important email copy...I've put together a few copy writing tips:

1. The main objective of copy writing is to make sales, build relationship and attract customers –  never forget this. For any copy you write (whether it's your website, flyers or marketing/sales emails) always plan out what you want to say to your customers.

2. Remember WHO your customers are...what makes them tick, do you understand exactly what they want and what bits of your product or service appeal to them most. Never lose sight of how to best communicate with your customers.

3. If you are going to advertise a special offer, you must always explain why it is so valuable...perhaps try making it 'exclusive' or give it a time deadline.

4. Want to try something a bit different? Why not piggy back on some recent research or news; for example, 'Royal wedding confirmed for 29 April 2011 – book your London accommodation with www.londontravels.com for a front seat view!'

5. Repetition can be good and it can be bad. It's fine to repeat an offer or message, but try not to use the same words too often or too close together. Use a thesaurus to help aid your creativity.

6. Write short sentences and short paragraphs – keep paragraphs to just two or three sentences and leave lots of white space. Don’t overcrowd the page…separate paragraphs with a clean, clear line of empty space. Aim for an average sentence length of around 16 words.

7. Keep email subjects short...no more than 60 characters (including spaces) and, if possible, you’re better off staying in the 30 to 50 range.

8. It’s easy to make small mistakes and if you’re reading something from a computer screen it’s even easier to miss them. The best thing to do is print out your copy, read it carefully and use your red pen wisely. Always ask someone else to read through your work too – if you’ve been writing for a while, they’re more likely to spot any mistakes than you are.

9. Always KISS (KEEP IT SHORT AND SIMPLE). Wield an axe to flabby language and unnecessary words. Don’t waffle or descend into a longwinded rant that’s of little interest to anybody but you. 

And finally...

10. Make it lively, make it memorable! How would you sell an egg? How about ‘a cracking good idea’ or ‘six of the best every week’? People will remember your message if you use colourful, memorable language. Use as many of the senses as you can and make an impression – it’ll help you make the sale.

Introduction to SPF (Sender Policy Framework)

SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is an email validation system that is designed to prevent spam emails by targeting the source of the address. An SPF tag will allow administrators to specify which host is allowed to send email from a given domain name this is done by creating a specific SPF record.

What does SPF actually DO?

Spam mail is created when people forge email addresses – so let’s say someone forges a hotmail.co.uk address and tries to spam you.

When the message is sent, you see MAIL FROM: <forged_address@hotmail.com> before you open the email you can ask Hotmail if the IP address comes from their network. They will then send you an email which tells you and your computer how to find out if the sending machine is authorised to send mail from Hotmail.

If Hotmail says they recognise the sending machine, it passes, and you can assume the sender is who they say they are. If the message fails SPF tests, it's a forgery. That's how you can tell it's probably a spammer.

Mr Site does it for you already!

At Mr Site, as always we cut the jargon out so you don't need to go through the hassle of adding any codes or an SPF record, we do it for you. All you have to do is to click here which will take you to a page set up for customers to insert the necessary details required for us to add an SPF record.

Spam email is always a hot topic with customers – a lot of people tell us they gets of it and want to know the best ways to minimise it.

There’s a few things we can advise…

Keeping your email address private – if you have an email address that you have kept relatively private - only a few of your friends know it - you are likely to get very few spam emails. If you have had the same email address for a few years and you have signed-up with various websites giving them that email address, you are likely to get more spam email.

Spam emails are often generated by automated software that trawls the internet trying to detect or guess email addresses. Basically, the more private you have kept your email address - the less spam email is likely to be sent to you.

You can’t entirely stop spam email being sent to you, but you can manage it so that your email software automatically deletes them before they reach your inbox or junk email folder. You can do this by setting up filtering rules, using the following instructions: 

• Log in to your Mr Site email account via mail.yourdomain.com (replace you’re yourdomain.com with your chosen website address) then click on the ‘Options’ button, then on ‘Spam rules’. Here you can set your spam filter options.
• Using the ‘Whitelist’ option you can also specify complete email addresses and domain names that will bypass the Mr Site’s spam filtering - which means they will ALWAYS reach your inbox.

You could also try using Mr Site’s contact form on your website, rather than putting your email address on any pages. People will then be able to send you an email message - without them (or any pesky spammers) knowing what your email address is.