Designing
colourful and graphical HTML email messages is a lot more complicated
than designing web pages. Additional factors you have to bear
in mind include:
- ISP’s
and SPAM filters blocking certain HTML codes
- Recipients
bandwidth and email account storage limitations
- Limitations
of particular email clients
What tool should I develop my messages in?
Always use
a specialist HTML editor such as Macromedia Dreamweaver to build your messages.
While packages such as Microsoft Word claim the ability to save messages in
HTML files, in reality they are not particularly competent at the task.
Microsoft
Word in particular will add a whole host of junk code in your message that will
inflate the email size beyond acceptable limits. As an example of this a recent
project the design team at Emailcenter under took was to convert a HTML document
created in Word. The file size was originally 120KB but on completion it was
only 14KB.
Can
I include JavaScript, Flash or streaming video?
The simple
answer to this is no. This is because:
- ISP’s
are starting to strip this out of your messages
- Many
email clients still cannot support these formats
- Many
consumers and businesses still do not have the bandwidth to cope with large
flash presentations or streaming video
If you do
need to use these technologies include them on your landing pages only.
Other web
technologies that should be avoided include:
- Cascading
style sheets
- Dynamic
HTML (DHTML)
- HTML
page property tags in the body tag such as ALINK and VLINK
Many email
clients simply cannot support these or choose simply to ignore them.
Managing the email size
It is vital
to keep the message size as small as possible, particularly in consumer email
campaigns. Recipients all have limits on the amount of email storage they can
have and if this is exceeded your message will not be delivered.
Tips to help reduce the email size
- Do not
use embedded images. Always link images from your website.
- Never
use attachments but place a link through to the document on your website
The file
size of the email is based upon the length of the HTML code, not on the images
used in the email as many people think. Tools in HTML editors like Dreamweaver
will enable you to remove any excess code that is increasing the file size.
Problems with particular email clients
Each email
client such as Outlook, Hotmail or Lotus Notes has its own method for interpreting
HTML email messages. This means a recipient with a Hotmail account might be
see the email differently than someone using Outlook.
The best
way to overcome this is to test your emails before sending it to your list.
Create test email accounts with all of the major ISP’s such as Hotmail,
Yahoo and AOL and make sure you have access to Outlook and Outlook Express to
view the message.
Examples
of particular issues you might find include:
- Hotmail
and other web based email accounts will change fonts and turn all text links
into a dark blue font colour
- Older
versions of AOL and Lotus Notes will struggle to handle certain HTML codes
To overcome
any issues implement the following points into your email marketing campaigns:
- Where
possible segment your list so you send an altered HTML to Hotmail and AOL
users to accommodate their email clients limitations
- Include
a link at the top of the email to a hosted version of the email. This will
allow users who cannot see the email the opportunity to view it correctly
- At the
subscription and opt-in point allow the user to choose between text and HTML
- Enable
the user to change their subscription between text and HTML at any time
What should I use to send the emails?
If you are
using anything other than a specialist email marketing or mailing list program
you will encounter problems. This will mean you have to put your addresses in
the BCC field. Again this is another thing ISP’s tend to block email messages
because of.
If you are
using Outlook or Outlook Express you will also find issues with code that the
software will put into your HTML causing potential errors in how you want the
email to function or look when the recipient opens it.
A solution
such as Maxemail will take your HTML as you intend it and deliver it to your
recipients one by one also giving you the opportunity to add personalisation.
You can also send your emails in MIME format allowing you to deliver a text
version of the email if the recipients email server cannot cope with the HTML
version.
|
