When someone approaches you to do email copy...and also wants to know if you take care of the HTML (and you don't know HTML)--do you just say yes and hire someone to do that?

Haven't been asked this one before....

If you actually do have someone tell them you don't personally do it but when you deliver your project that can be part of the package.

Just let em' know you can do it both ways, it's their choice.

Then you don't sound inexperienced. Just give em' the option like you've done it a million times.

Or you get a free WYSIWYG editor like Kompozer from www.kompozer.net (I think) and create your own.
It's really easy.
Larry Foster

Or just say no, you prefer to stick with what you're great at, copywriting. Do you think you'll lose the gig if you aren't able to offer it?

It's always a good idea to know basic HTML.

I'd ask them, "Why, what do you want done with it?" They'll probably answer "I don't know, my brother told me to ask" or they'll be specific. If it sounds like they want you to layout pages, "fix" images or whatever else then I'd ask for a drawing of exactly what they want or point me to a page that is what they want. Be careful of feature creep though as they may want to micro-manage colors, sizes, etc. That can quickly become a nightmare.

If they start talking about "standards" then I tell them to send me a print copy of the standards they want me to adhere to otherwise they'll just have take my word for it that it's the best it can be. Not much else to do. Cheers

Marlon may seem a little nutty, but he has some decent little programs.
(and he is great at writing ad copy and marketing)

This one is for making web pages that sell.

Design Dashboard

thanks for all the replies! This is a really cool online company in the food industry...they have gotten lots of great press and I would love to work with them.

I responded to them before coming back here (although it took me hours to get back to them)--and kind of mumbled something in my email about knowing people who took care of "that technical stuff."

Hope that suffices until I can talk to them further.

thanks again!

The question you want to ask is "are you planning on using html in your emails?"

In many cases (but not all) plain text will get a higher response than html emails (probably because more emails actually get delivered).

So you may need to explain that to your clients.

Doing html is actually quite simple and something you should learn anyway.

You just need to use a html editor and then make sure that if it's a website or an email they get delivered in the same format as you intended.

Keep in mind that if you're getting asked this question in most cases what they're really asking is "are you giving me a full solution or will I have to hire someone else as well as you?"

There's very good money in providing a full hands off solution for businesses.

Generally speaking business owners want results. They don't want to have to bother with technical details.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

In about 30 minutes - 1 hour, you can learn enough HTML (for free online) to be able to use it in emails . If you want to.

Just go to the W3Schools site.