Email Marketing Tips - Email 101

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Email 101

As we all get ready for the holiday season, we thought it would be a good time to get back to basics and ensure that all of your holidays emails are viewed just the way that you want them to.

So here's what we might call Email 101; tips to bear in mind this holiday season — and all year!

1. Only use basic HTML. You know why. That includes JavaScript and HTML layers — messages with scripts can get blocked or stripped by the email client/browser. If you want to use dynamic elements, send recipients to your website instead. Don't use rich-media functions (like video, inline audio or flash). Keep background images to a minimum and understand that they will not appear in some email clients.


2. Along the same lines, use caution if you're using cascading style sheets. CSS can cause rendering problems in some email clients; it may also get stripped out or overwritten. If you are using CSS, choose the inline embedded style, and place it within body tags, not in the header.


3. Create HTML with a maximum pixel width of 600; this means that your customers won't have to do any horizontal scrolling; we often forget that the window in which email is displayed is rarely a full screen wide. Make sure that you test your width in as many email clients as you can before sending the email out.


4. Now that you've got the right width, let's consider the length, and our advice is to keep your emails reasonable. This not only will assist customers who are on dial-up, but will also keep the email from being filtered out (viruses live in very large files).


5. Image issues are important to consider. The more complex they are, the longer they'll take to load. If an email takes too long to load, the customer may move on without viewing it. Slow loading of images can be helped if you use alt tags to name the image — at least the customer then sees what it is about as it loads, and is more likely to stay with you. Finally, don't use 1 x 1 pixel spacer gifs (generally used to force widths in table data cells); the spacers are commonly used in spam and so your email could be filtered out.


6. We've talked about this in past newsletters, but bear in mind the problems associated with the use of Outlook as a mail client. Remember that Outlook uses a preview pane, so be sure that Design your email with the Outlook preview pane in mind, so make sure the top portion of the email carries your key message


7. This may seem obvious, but it isn't always: design your email to read top to bottom, and left to right.


8. No matter how well you format your message, it will never be visible to everyone. So make it easy for customers to follow a link from the email to a page on your website where the offer or message is repeated. Put the link at or near the top of your message so it can be seen and clicked right away.

All of these considerations should help you present clean, workable emails that will get your message across during the busy holiday season!