Visually pleasing presentations can be a key component to effectively communicating with your customers. HelpSpot’s built-in What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editors allow you to add style, presentation and organization to your emails.

Let’s dissect a well formatted message, created by the WYSIWYG, by first looking at it’s unformatted counterpart. This is a pre-sales message giving customers a few key features of the product, pricing information, and installation instructions.

Let’s take a look at a standard, non-formatted request.

Standard Non-Formatted Email

Well, you may be saying to yourself, this doesn’t look so bad and you’re correct.  It clearly states the information needed to be sent, however it’s not as neat or convenient as it could be for our end readers.

Some trouble issues are:

1. The Key Features list is to long and is not spotlighted in a way that is easy for the customer to follow or remember what the features are.
2. The URL links are long and cumbersome for the email and are not active.  Your customers would have either type out the URL or copy and paste it into their browser.
3. The Instructions for uploading your file is listed but visually not the best.  Using asterisks instead of bullets, looks unprofessional and cluttered.
4. The Footer section, is long and nonfunctional.  Again, the Email links and URL links are not active and thus not user-friendly.

Let’s look at a better way.

Formatted Email

Now, this is much better! My formatted email is well organized and shows emphases on key features, provides usability by using hyperlinks and is condensed.

Let’s break it down into sections for a better understanding.

Section 1 -  Key Features

The first obvious change here is that our key features have been organized into a bulleted list, also known as an unordered list.  These are often used when the sequence of tasks isn’t important.  Bulleted list are great for listing features, organizing thoughts or when you want to draw attention to specific items.

This section has also made use of italicized words, which provides emphases on certain words from others within the text.  Pay attention not to over use this though, as it will loose it’s effect.

Section 2 - URL Links

Long URL paths clutter up your sentences and disrupt the flow of the readers thought process.  In this section we have removed URL, https://www.userscape.com/customers/index.php/purchase.  Opting to instead to bring our customer’s attention to the fact that they can purchase their software online, yet providing a convenient direct link to the store.

I accomplished this by bolding the words “Website’s Purchase Page” and activating it as a link.

To create a link:

1. Select the text
2. Click on the Link button
3. Type or paste the URL in the Link URL textarea.
4. Click “Insert”

Section 3 - Instructions

Again, I have changed the text to a numbered list, otherwise known as an ordered list.  I have choose this because the order in which my customer preforms these actions are important.  I have also underlined the List’s heading to inform my reader that what follows is important and they should pay attention.   List provide a great way to present a lot of information in an “easy to understand” format.

Section 4 - Footer

In the unformatted version of this email, my footer was too long in addition to being nonfunctional.  Now I have brought my reader’s attention efficiently to my contact information and in addition provided them direct links to area’s that may be useful to them.