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Special Considerations for Webmail Services
A lot of your recipients will be checking their email in their web browser, such as with Yahoo!Mail, Hotmail, or Gmail. Since they're viewing email in browsers, there are certain things you need to know when you code your HTML emails:
They'll strip out your < > , < > and < > tags, in order to keep your code from interfering with their web pages. That means...
- Any background colors you specify in your < > tag will be lost. So wrap your entire email inside a larger, 100% wide table, and set a background color to that table.
- Any CSS that you place inside the < > tags will be lost. So don't try to link to CSS files hosted on your server. Use embedded CSS instead, and make sure it's below the < > tag. If you're a web designer, that'll definitely make you feel "kinda dirty" because that's not exactly the "proper" place to put embedded CSS. But no worries---it'll work. If you just can't stomach that, use inline CSS.
- Some webmail clients are starting to strip even the most basic CSS, even if it's embedded below the BODY tag (like we described above). We think it's because they don't want any of your CSS interfering with their CSS, or maybe because they're using so much JavaScript and AJAX technology, stuff just gets buggy. Keep that in mind, and do lots of testing.
- Tip: you can use euro.message LIVE's Inbox Inspector to get screenshots of your work in all the major email programs and webmail clients, to see if your CSS is breaking. Saves a lot of time and hassle.
CSS in HTML email
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a Godsend for websites, but don't put too much faith in it with HTML email. For instance, you shouldn't expect DIVs to work. And definitely stay away from CSS positioning. Won't work. If you're a CSS-standards freak, you are going to hate yourself after coding HTML email. You'll have to rely on old-fashioned < > for your layouts in HTML email, and only use CSS for simple font formatting and colors. Always design your CSS to "fail gracefully." That means if someone took away your CSS, your design and content would still display decently. Before you send your HTML email, delete the CSS and see what it looks like. Did you have tiny text that is now gigantic, and blowing out your tables? CSS is especially a touchy situation if you're using a WYSIWYG to design your HTML email, because WYSIWYGs insert all kinds of crazy CSS and DIVs by default. It's one of the drawbacks of WYSIWYGs for HTML email. It may help you get things coded, but you still have to understand HTML enough to go back and remove some of the code, so things won't break in email applications. You might as well code by hand. Using Microsoft Word to generate HTML is even worse than using WYSIWYGs. Word adds so much code behind the scenes, it's unbelievable. Don't do it. Learn to code HTML, or use our built-in HTML email designer.
If your email design uses lots of CSS, be sure to check it in Google's Gmail. At the time of this writing, they don't fully support CSS, so you'll see your fonts defaulting to Arial, and black in color. Gmail stripped out virtually all of my CSS! Where did my font sizes, font colors, and lineheight go? And since the fonts are so much larger in Gmail, it could have blown out my table cells (if I didn't know what I was doing). But notice the top line (next to the peeking chimp). It wrapped my text into 2 rows. Blech! Flash, (and JavaScript, ActiveX, movies, and other stuff that won't work) in HTML email. You can deliver HTML emails with Flash in them, but most recipients won't be able to view them. Not unless they're using an email program that uses a browser to render their HTML email. Microsoft Outlook was a program that used Internet Explorer to render HTML email, so Flash would sometimes work there. But Microsoft Outlook 2007 is no longer going to use IE to render email. They're using Microsoft Word instead, so Flash is not going to work there anymore. Anyways, most anti-virus applications block the code used to embed Flash movies, and they block JavaScript, ActiveX, and even background music files. All that stuff has been used in the past to spread viruses, so it's commonly blocked now.
Point emails to landing pages
If you've got a great animation or movie to show to your recipients, just send a simple, intriguing GIF or JPEG graphic in your HTML email, then link it to a "landing page" on your website with the animation in it. Same goes for JavaScript, ActiveX, and movie files. Anti-virus applications block them from running. So fancy rollover or pop-up navigation and streaming videos just aren't going to work either. The only email application on our test machines that will actually play fancy stuff (like Flash and movies) seems to be Outlook 2000 (which is kind of old, these days). Unless you know for a fact that every single one of your recipients uses Outlook 2000, and you know their anti-virus applications won't block your stuff from running, don't send Flash, JavaScript, ActiveX, or movies in HTML email. Just won't work reliably.
Background Colors
Remember when we told you (above) about how browser-based email services (like Yahoo!Mail and Hotmail) strip out your < > , < > and < > tags? That's what you need to remember when coding your background colors and images. You normally specify that stuff in your < > tag, but you can't rely on that with HTML email. You'll need to create a big, 100% wide "table wrap" around your email. Set your background color in that table, and use some CELLPADDING as needed. If you're into CSS, you might be tempted to use a < > instead. But we've seen DIVs break quite frequently in email applications, so we don't recommend them.
Anatomy of a Good, Healthy HTML Email Newsletter
- Your company name in the "From." Recipients should recognize who the email is from instantly. It can't be deceptive in any way. If a recipient has to strain his brain to remember who you are, he'll click "this is spam" instead of opening.
- A relevant subject line (don't be "spammy"), with your company or newsletter name in it. So they instantly know who the email is from, and what it's about (hence, "subject" line).
- The "To:" field of your email should be personalized to the recipient's name, not their email address. euro.message LIVE sets you "merge" recipient names into this field, if you have it in your database.
- A one-click opt-out link that removes people from your list immediately. Consider placing it at the top of your email (as well as in the footer), so that people who want off your list can find it really easy (instead of clicking their "Junk" button). If you use euro.message LIVE's managed list functionality, you would use our *|UNSUB|* tag to generate your unsubscribe link (it's required in every email you send from our system). Any recipient who clicks it will be instantly removed from your list. If you use our built-in HTML email templates, we insert that link into the footer for you (no coding required).
- In addition to your opt-out link, you might also include a link in your header for recipients to "view this email in your browser." Point it to an archived version of your email on your server. This helps if the email got forwarded to friends, and then got mangled along the way. euro.message LIVE automatically keeps an archived version of all your campaigns on our server. You can just use our *|ARCHIVE|* tag in your emails to link to yours. If you use our built-in HTML email templates, we automatically place this link at the top of all your emails.
- A link to your company's privacy policy should be in your email. If you don't have a privacy policy, you can use the DMA's privacy policy generator. Google the phrase, "DMA privacy policy generator"
- Your valid, physical mailing address (P.O. Boxes aren't good enough), and as much contact information as possible. The more contact information you provide, the more reputable your email will look.
- Bonus: It's a really good idea to also include some kind of reminder text, like "You are receiving this email because you signed up at our website." People forget opting-in to lists, and they get a little trigger-happy with the "this is spam" button. That can get you reported to the major ISPs, so you want to prevent that as much as possible. Also, in the rare case that a recipient reports you to an antispam organization, having this reminder text can make the difference between a server admin blacklisting you forever, or contacting you for further explanation. If you use our built-in email templates, euro.message LIVE inserts that reminder text into your email footer automatically.
Plain-text Email
Don't forget your plain-text email! You need it for people who can't (or won't) view HTML. Sometimes, the plain-text version of your email is the one that gets displayed if your recipient checks his email on his mobile device. If you don't take the time to create the plain-text version of your HTML email, you'll just look like a lazy spammer (spam filters will penalize you for only sending HTML). When you send a campaign in euro.message LIVE, you'll need to create both versions of your message (HTML & Plain-text). Then we "bundle" them together in "multipart format" and send them off. Your recipients' email applications then decide which version to display.
The Art of Plain-text email
- Use a plain text editor, like TextWrangler for the Mac, or Windows NotePad. Don't use something like Microsoft Word, because it won't give you the kind of "raw" text files you need. You need an application that gives no formatting whatsoever.
- If you're using euro.message LIVE, create a plain-text message in your text editor, then simply copy-paste it into the "plain text message" field in euro.message LIVE. No uploading required. Or, you can just type straight into euro.message's interface. One thing I like to do is pop-up preview my HTML email, highlight all my content, then paste it into the plain-text field in euro.message LIVE. Then, I go and reformat everything.
- By default, some email applications start to wrap your plain-text messages at about 60 characters or so. That's not really a big deal to most people. Just let your text wrap wherever their email programs want it to. But if you have content that you absolutely do not want to wrap unexpectedly (like in the middle of a hyperlink), one nice little trick is to type a letter 60 times across the top of your message, and use that as your visual "ruler." As your content approaches the end of that ruler, hit your return key and "hard wrap" the line. Again, this is only if you want very strict formatting. These days, I let my plain-text emails just wrap fluidly.
- People don't read email. They scan email. Especially plain-text email. So make it really easy to find important information with bullet points and visual markers
- You can't code a clickable link with plain-text email. You just have to type out the entire URL. Some email applications will make it clickable automatically. Some won't.
One thing we've noticed is that a lot of people spend so much of their time on the HTML version of their message, they're too "drained" to work on their plain-text email (we're guilty of that ourselves). So they either ignore it, or they slap some junk in, or they "cheat" a little, and type in something like, "Evidently, you can't view HTML email, so visit this URL in your browser to see our newsletter in all its glory." We think this is a big mistake. So don't put all your energy into the HTML version of your email. Save some love for your plain-text message too.
HTML that you're too pooped to make a plain-text email, you should consider setting up one re-usable template that you can just select, and "fill with content" every campaign. No need to reinvent the wheel for every campaign.
Campaign Management
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