How to Create Navigation Links in Your E-Mail Marketing Messages

Including navigation links in your e-mail marketing messages can save your audience time and direct them to exactly where you want them to be. Create links as a table of contents or to take your audience to specific pages on your website.

Navigation links are actually anchor links in HTML. To create an anchor link, use an anchor tag to create a name and place the anchor in your e-mail code at the beginning of the content you want to link to. Then add a link in your e-mail text that points to the anchor.

Using your HTML or website editor of choice, follow these basic steps (the specifics depend on the editor you're using):

1. Use an anchor tag to place your anchor and include the name attribute to identify the anchor's name.

   
   

   Use the first word of the headline or section of content for the anchor name so you can remember how to name your anchor link later.

   
   
   
   

   1. To set the anchor in text, include an <a> anchor tag with a name attribute within your paragraph tags: <p><a name="anchorname">headline or title</p>

      
      
   
   

   2. To name an image as an anchor, include the name attribute within the image tag: <img name="anchorname" src="http://www.yourcompany.com/sample/image_file/imagename.jpg">

      
      
   
   
   
   

   If you're new to HTML, note that you replace anchorname with whatever name you'd like to use, headline or title with the text that actually appears on your site, and the URL with the location and filename of the image you actually want to use.

   
   



2. Create your anchor link by inserting the <a> anchor tag in your HTML e-mail text, with the href attribute pointing to the anchor name you specify in Step 1 and preceded by a # character.

   
   
   
   

   1. To create a TOC link that scrolls to your anchor tag, use the following: <a href="#anchorname">TOC link text</a>

      
      
   
   

   2. To create a navigation link that scrolls to an anchor link on your website, use: <a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/page.html#anchorname>navigation link text</a>

      
      
   
   
   
   

HTML can be tricky to master, so brush up on your HTML skills before you attempt anchor tags or other bells and whistles in your code.

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