A ‘little wonder’ is a seemingly insignificant action or event that eventually has a large impact on your long-term situation. In this two-part series, Jordan Lane looks at some email little wonders — simple ways to improve your email programs — and the key benefits from each of them.

Like diligently saving pocket change, there are some easy additions you can make to your email campaigns that can bring large rewards in the long run. Today we’ll look at two of these tactics that can yield long-term success.

View a hosted version of an email

Providing the opportunity for a subscriber to view an online or hosted version of a message will enable those who might have images blocked or have email rendering issues to be able to view the message. A hosted version, often linked via the text Having trouble viewing this email?, is typically used for HTML and text versions of a mailing.  A great place to put this link is in the top or header of an email.

Subscribers now have one less excuse as to why they should not read the content of an email. If the email can be viewed by the subscriber despite content rendering issues, then the email marketer has overcome a significant technical challenge.

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Yesterday I stumbled upon this post by Jay Seaton at the Mobile Messaging 2 blog, which covers a topic we all could learn something from: “Tips for (Responsible) Texting.”

There are a couple of real gems in there worth considering, including this one:

Remember that “Text Language” is for texting only! Sure when you’re limited to a few characters it makes sense to abbreviate and use acronyms; it’s a part of texting culture. But don’t forget Grandma won’t understand it when you respond to her joke with LOL.

The same could easily be said of making sure your email copy is understandable to your whole audience if your list covers a wide range of demographics. After all, you don’t want to alienate certain edges of your customer base by talking too much about, say, your memories of the William Taft presidency when most of them are concerned with the latest episode of Hannah Montana.