It has been clear for a number of years: E-mail marketing is an extremely strong marketing instrument. Everyone who listens today with just half an ear to the digital highway, will come into contact with e-mail marketing several times each week. Such a contact can take many different forms: As a recipient, as the sender of such marketing messages or as the writer.

The majority of the people are in the role of being a recipient. This can reach from a weekly newsletter from ones sport club to the expansion of the product range of your bakery on the corner, for instance: The e-mail messages just keep on coming into your mailbox, where they are then read or deleted. And of course, the person responsible for sending out a newsletter wants that the recipient reads it, and that he remembers what has been presented there. Deleted newsletters are simply thrown away money.

And that is precisely where the task of the writer of such a newsletter begins. He must make sure that such newsletters are conspicuous in the mass of mail messages that are received, are read, kept for possible further action and perhaps even sent on to someone else. Unfortunately it happens more frequently than hoped for, that e-mail marketing is a measure for next to nothing. The recipients will see your carefully drafted message as spam, and they want to be rid of it as quickly as possible. The effort you put into the layout is wasted, because the recipient doesn’t read HTML e-mails. Luckily there are a number of simple rules, which are guaranteed to lead to more interested (and perhaps also more) readers.

Pictures are increasingly being blocked

Since certain image formats can also contain viruses, the market leading e-mail programs play it safe. Thunderbird, Outlook and Gmail block every picture, until the user gives his approval. The first impression of your e-mail message is that of a failed website … and that is a shame.

A balanced mix of HTML and images is a solution for this problem. Make sure that you do not put all your information in one image. That way your readers at least have something to read, even without pictures. Also make the content available as plain text: Certain e-mail programs ignore all types of layout and only display the code.

A small overview of some good principles:

• Important content should be presented as text, never as an image. Items that may not be ignored should be headlines, and they should demand action and include links.
• Include a link to the web version of your newsletter, right at the start of your e-mail message.
• Ask your recipients to add you to their address book: That way the e-mail application will not see your messages as spam.
• Test the layout of the message without images, before you send it off.

1998?

Where we have advanced on the Internet to a design without tables, e-mail applications are still stuck in the good old nineties.

When you use a design with someting other than a single column of text, then it is best to use a table for aligning everything neatly. And for keeping it aligned.

That’s how it was in 1998 …

There are even some programs that remove the CSS from the header of an e-mail. Gmail, the e-mail solution of Google, removes all CSS components. Except for the inline styles.

So, when you have completed drafting your newsletter, you will have to go back and apply inline CSS everywhere. We at Motionmill will gladly help you in this, in word and in deed.

Offline text

Despite the fact that HTML and CSS are hip and cool, a large part of your readers would rather receive only text. People with a Blackberry, or some other mobile device, will frequently not get to see any special layout at all.

You should be aware of the fact that you should also provide a plain text version without any layout, besides making a fully layouted HTML letter. Luckily Motionmill Mailer includes an option that lets you copy your fancy designs as plain text.
A maximum result with a minimum of effort!

Tags: design, e-mail, e-mail marketing, marketing