a. Conflict: Does your story feature a struggle between two or more easily defined groups?

b. Impact: Will central issue of your story change public in any measurable way?

c. Immediacy: Is your issue timely? Is it happening now?

3. Fascination: Will your story appeal to public at a primal level? In other words, is your story interesting?

a. Drama: Does your story offer trappings of dramatic works, such as plot, characters, suspense, setting and like?

b. Human interest: Can public relate to characters in your news story?

c. Emotion: Will your story touch public's heart?

d. Images: Will your story naturally supply or suggest powerful video, photos or other graphics that will help tell story? (This is especially important for TV, but is equally important for print if you want to receive a primary position in a newspaper or magazine.)

e. Myth: Does your story tap into stereotypes of mass media? For example, powerbroker, underdog, workaholic, iconoclast, eccentric, selfless advocate and so on.

f. Surprise: Does your story offer an unexpected twist? For example, "man bites dog." PR Rainmakers look for these patterns in stories they sell to news media. If patterns don't emerge naturally, then PR Rainmakers search for ways to inject patterns into their stories.

Without patterns of newsworthiness, media simply will not recognize your story as news.

Check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Make sure it is easy to read.

You can use this utility to format your emails to right width. It's not perfect, but it will save you plenty of time because you can format your text at different widths. Overall, it does a very good job.

http://www.jbmckee.com/formatit/index.htm

3. Anti-Spam Before you send your message out, you want to check to make sure it can get past filters frequently used by ISPs.

There's a simple and easy way to check your message. SiteSell.com has created a new feature called Spam Check.

Basically, you can send a your email as a test message and find out how filters rank it. Then, you can make changes to your email before sending it to your list.

http://spamcheck.sitesell.com

Email marketing is a time consuming process. Done right, it can be a very lucrative tool in your marketing arsenal. These tools will help you make your email marketing efforts more effective.