Email Marketing

Design Considerations for HTML Email

I was asked by a potential client if there were any good online resources to learn about special design considerations when you're creating HTML email newsletters.

After a quick look in Google I couldn't find anything that hit all the points I thought he should know about, so I ended up writing something up for him quickly myself. Not wanting to keep this information to myself now that I've taken the time to write it out, I figured I'd publish it in this blog.

There's not a lot of explanation with these points, but if you've been digging into html email/newsletter best practices, it should all make sense to you.

Here ya go...

  • 600 pixels is the generally the recommended width for html newsletters, allowing for the full width to be displayed even in clients like Outlook where the software takes up considerable real estate on the left of the screen and previews the email on the right.

  • It's critical to practice “vertical economy” for all elements of html newsletters. For instance, if the masthead or top banner is too tall, the headlines can very easily get pushed down “below the fold.”

  • When creating comps for newsletter designs, it’s critical to bear in mind that html newsletters must be coded with old-school tables (not CSS). Text can be formatted with CSS if desired, but text encoded in this manner will not render properly in web clients like Gmail (Gmail strips out ALL CSS).

  • Images must be used carefully if emails are to be remotely readable prior to images being displayed in the email client. While well-branded companies like Apple can arguably get away with having image-based emails, it’s generally considered a bad idea.

  • My recommendation is to build the email in a manner where headlines and titles are readable without images being displayed. Alt tags, of course, also become quite important.

  • My personal preference for a nice, readable layout is a 1:3 two column layout with the narrow column on the left side (150 pixel left column, 450 pixel main column). Set up like this, the left column is very effective for call-outs, table of contents, appropriate ads and promotion.

  • Generally, the most practical approach to ongoing newsletter production is to have a professional designer mock it up, get a competent coder to do the initial html templates, and then have the editorial or production staff place the articles in each issue (possibly with a little help on the graphics).

  • Also, in general, the simpler the better for layout. While the temptation is always there to build it out to the nth degree, a simple layout that can be quickly and easily edited for each issue makes ongoing deployment WAAAY more quick and practical. Also, while the layout needs to meet branding guidelines and represent the company well, a straightforward, consistent layout is also in the best interests of the reader.

  • Expect to engage in a significant amount of testing to ensure the initial template renders properly across a wide range of email clients (including gmail, aol, yahoo, hotmail, .mac, mac mail, outlook 2007, windows mail, etc). Its kind of painful, but this time spent up front will save a ton of time troubleshooting down the road.

  • Many of the email service providers provide wysiwyg templates, but depending on the complexity of your layout and the proficiency of those administering it, Dreamweaver can be a more practical option (my preference).

  • Generally, I lean towards having shorter articles in the newsletters. If there is a longer one it is best to go as the last article. If there tend to be a number of longer articles, it’s usually best to provide short excerpts combined with links to the complete article on the site (which should be part of your SEO strategy as well).

Happy coding!

Email Reputation - Clean Out the Dead!

I read a good article on email reputation the other day by Ralph Wilson at Web Marketing Today. He supplies 11 great tips on improving your delivery rate. In these tips, he rightly advocates removing bounced recipients and finding ways to engage and woo back subscribers, but leaves out one critical tip: clean out the dead!

Particularly if you've been sending email for a long time, it's likely that you have an extremely large percentage of your database that is not interested in receiving your emails. Don't take this personally, it's a natural consequence of time and shifting interests.

"Email is cheap," you might say, "why would I cut people out of my list?" Well, a pattern that I'm starting to see is that if you've been sending emails for a couple years or more, if you're using responsible email practices, and if your open rate is less than 20%, it's likely that 50% or more of your database is effectively dead.

Let me give you a couple examples. I did one project this year where we experienced problems migrating a large list from one email vendor to another. Deliverability was an issue after migrating the database and we needed to act fast. In this case, I filtered the list down so that it included only people who had opened an email in the previous year, had purchased a product in the last 18 months, or had joined the list in the last 3 months.

The result was that we reduced a list of 2.9 million subscribers to a list of only 1.2 million. Sounds scary, doesn't it? When I saw the size of the new list I thought I was in big trouble. That said, a funny thing happened when we deployed the next newsletter.

Although we had cut the list by almost 60%, we still got 90% of the typical response in terms of opens and clicks. While it would have been nice to have kept that last 10%, the huge cost savings of reducing the deployments by 60% and the improvements to deliverability meant that our roi went through the roof and the cost savings more than made it worthwhile (as well as justifying my fees for quite some time).

More recently, I worked on a database about half this size with similar results. The only difference in this case was that without the deliverability crisis we had more time to tinker with the final segmentation rules for who we kept and who we removed from the database.

In this case, we were able to get to a point where we balanced the "age" of the subscriber against their activities in the past 2 years and were able to cut the list size in half while maintaining virtually 100% of the open and click activities as compared to past mailings.

Again, the cost savings and the improvements to deliverability made this a tremendous win and in one fell swoop we virtually doubled the roi on what we were paying to deploy emails.

Bottom line: if you have a large list and have been sending email for over a year then you could achieve some significant cost savings by cleaning up your database.

Email Marketing - Don't ask for a password if I'm unsubscribing!

Ever tried to unsubscribe from a newsletter, only to find out you need to enter an account password in order to access the unsubscribe function? Ouch.

Message to marketers - don't ever, ever, ever require this. First off, if the unsubscribe function is being accessed from a newsletter, the technology required to automatically pre-populate your readers' email in your unsubscribe form is so simple that even I could do it!

Secondly, chances are that a majority of the readers who want to unsubscribe probably don't remember what password they originally used for your service or publication. By requiring they log in to unsubscribe, you're pretty much guaranteeing that these folks will flag you as spam instead of trying to figure out their password. So, if you're wondering why your emails are going to the spam folder on Gmail or AOL, this might just be the reason.

Questions?

Fill out our Contact form and we'll get right back to you.

We'd love to hear about your unique business challenges. Don't worry about any persistent salespeople calling and harassing you. We'll answer your question and have a look at your web site. If we can see some ways to help you reach your goals in an ROI-positive manner, we'll let you know.