Tags: email blast, email marketing tips
When you design an email these days it’s still quite far off from the browsers. There are still no standards for email presentation and designers are stuck using ancient coding techniques to create the best effective method. Using the following 9 tips should help you create a successful email blast until the standards are created.
Fortunately, there are people working to create standards. Email Standards Project is a website that is at the top of the list working towards establishing these standards. Launched in November, the Email Standards Project is an advocate of the establishment of common standards for emails, and is probably the closest thing there is to a regulating body in this field. The site even offers a helpful rating system of various email platforms based on its own acid test.
Let’s jump into these Tip’s.
| 1. Go back to HTML – Scrap everything you’ve learned in recent years about tableless CSS structures and revert back to the HTML that your grand parents grew up with (its an exaggeration, but I swear it’s been that long since I’ve used tables). Now forget about positioning divs with CSS and rely on table cells to lay out your content as many email readers will not render positioning properly or at all. |  |
| 2. Use Inline Styles – Most major email readers, whether they’re online, like Gmail and Hotmail, or desktop applications, like Outlook and Thunderbird, will ignore everything between the <head></head> tags, including your styles (whether you do it via <link> or <style></style> tags). This means you should style your HTML using inline styles. Be careful though there are many CSS properties that will not render properly, for example the ‘position’ property. A detailed report on how various major email readers performed against an Acid Test (which tests a handful of common CSS properties) can be found here. |  |
| 3. Don’t Use Background Images – Using background images has become an essential tool on the designer’s belt. However, there is such an inconsistency between browsers that will actually display background images that it’s best not to use them. As an Outlook 2007 user, I know as a fact that no background images are displayed (this is true for Gmail as well). On the other hand, readers like AOL Webmail and Windows Live Mail (not Hotmail) will render background images correctly. Since it’s too difficult to predict what reader your audience is using, your use of background images should only be for enhancement and not as something your design depends on. |  |
| 4. Expect Your Images To Get Blocked – For security purposes, many email readers will block images embedded in an email by default. This is because email applications are trying to help you eliminate spam and block bad images as well as Trojans that embed themselves into images. Today’s reader must opt-in on each email to display the images (though some may allow readers to set their preference). What this means is that you should NOT rely on your images to communicate your message. Avoid replacing too much text with images and make sure your email design still gets the point across even when images are not displayed. Use ‘alt’ attribute to display the same information in your images. |  |
| 5. Use ‘Alt’ Attribute In Images – To avoid completely losing the message on an image when images are blocked, fill out the ALT attribute for each of your images. This ensures that the important content from the image (i.e. the text) is still passed along. This also helps in cases where the reader is using a text-only email client, as the image will be replaced by the ALT attribute. |  |
| 6. Always Use Absolute Paths – Make sure to use absolute paths when referencing images. Relative paths (i.e. /images/my-image.jpg) will break as the email reader won’t know what the path to the image file is. Your image paths should look like this instead: http://www.mywebsite.com/emails/images/my-image.jpg. This is so simple that it can often be accidentally overlooked so make sure to double check your image paths before you send out your email. |  |
| 7. File Size Matters – Using large images in your email design will slow down the download process on the reader’s end and may deter them from reading it all together. In some cases, exceptionally large emails may also be flagged for spam and viruses. To minimize these risks, optimize your images so that they have the smallest possible file size. This may require you to play around with JPG, GIF, and PNG formats to see which gives the highest image quality with the smallest file size. Where possible, use plain text to communicate your message. |  |
| 8. Avoid Using Rich Media and Forms – In a browser, using Flash, animated images, and forms extends interactivity to the user experience. In an email, it bulks up the file size, raises security flags, or just doesn’t work at all. If there are interactive components attached to your email campaign, you are far better off linking the reader to your website than to attempt to embed them into the email itself. It’s an extra step but at least you can be sure that your rich media and forms will work. Also you can track links to your website this way. |  |
| 9. Design For Minimalistic Reading – Just like designing for a web browser, you need to be considerate of screen resolutions and window sizes. In addition to this, email readers often have added sidebars and navigation on both sides of where your email content is displayed, further decreasing the amount of space you have to work with. I say keep the width of your email design at least within 800px (we commonly use 750 px or 640 px). |  |
If you are considering doing an email campaign let us help you keep it simple and effective. Contact Benzing Technologies Today! (866) 980-2369
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