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As an ezine publisher I see many ads a day. A lot of people seem to be missing the basics of email marketing. The following tips are important to remember when starting an email marketing campaign, or building your first website.

#1 Make Your Link Clickable

Most email clients (except AOL) support hyperlinks. Your page is more likely to be visited if it is clickable from your email. Most people will not take the time to cut and paste it into their browser.

To make a site link clickable (hyperlinked), be sure to put http:// in front of your site name. It looks like this: http://yoursite.com

To make an email address clickable (hyperlinked), put mailto: in front of the address. It will look like this: mailto:youremail@isp.com

DO NOT put a space between either of the above.

#2 Specific Subject Line

If you are tracking your ads or filtering responses, it is useful to enter a specific subject line into your email link.

You can insert a subject line into the email link by adding ?subject= at the end of your address. For example: mailto:youremail@isp.com?subject=test

If you want more than one word in the subject, DO NOT put a space Between the words. Instead, separate the words with _ It will look like this: mailto:youremail@isp.com?subject=test_copy

On your Site and in SOME email clients the above example will now automatically insert your desired subject line for the person responding to your address.

#3 Get it Right

When creating clickable links (hyperlinks), the most important thing to remember is to spell them correctly. If you miss even one letter, your link is useless and you've wasted an ad.

Your time is valuable, don't waste it by not checking the link. Take the extra 2 seconds to look at it before you hit send.

One of the best ways to check it is to send it to yourself. This way you can be sure it works by clicking on it after you receive it.

Whether your writing a classified ad, sending an email, or building your first website follow the above tips and your email campaign will be more successful.