Email Marketing - A Little Overwhelmed

[gav240z]

Hi Everyone,

I'm an email marketing newbie but I've been doing some research on the topic and think I understand whats required.

So a quick checklist

- Provide a relevant straightforward subject line
- Assume a width of 600px (max) for mail reader view ports
- Use alt tags and minimal usage of images
- Rely on backdated HTML for formatting and use CSS1 standards
- Use inline styles
- Provide a way to unsubscribe in the footer
- Use as much plain text as possible
- Provide a catchy headline to the newsletter
- Provide a call to action!
- Provide well formed HTML and check for validation errors
- Avoid overloading with keywords that could trigger spam filters

Ok so that's my checklist so far. I'm a bit anxious about using table layouts and little CSS. I've spent so much time reading books and looking at websites on best practice CSS XTHML it seems some what counterproductive to go back to old HTML.

Does anyone know of a good source or tutorial on creating a simple HTML newsletter and how it should be structured from a coding point of view?

Oh and have I missed out on anything else? Some links to great resources would be really appreciated .

 

[Forbairt]

1. Use tables ... (makes me cringe too)
2. very basic css for colouring only
3. do some testing on as many mail readers as possible
[I'll guess outlook / outlook express / thunderbird / evolution would be the main client apps]
gmail / hotmail or whatever its called these days / yahoo mail

4. Make sure the people have actually signed up to receive your newsletter
5. Make sure if they click the unsubscribe link it works (obvious but do testing to make sure)

6. If you want things to look kinda complex ... use graphics
7. Provide a link to an online version of it ...

... and so on ...

 

[louie]

I was just about to point the #7th as well.

In theory you seem to know what to do, put it in practise and should work fine.

 

[gav240z]

Thanks for the help.

Thanks for the advice and prompt responses.

I found HTML Email Marketing from MailChimp to be really useful.

I saved some time modifying some existing templates which were provided for free here:
Free HTML Email Newsletter Templates from MailChimp

They also have a free guide to help you understand important issues with HTML email marketing.

 

[mneylon]

Don't include Flash, javascript or forms in the emails

 

[gav240z]

Follow up on email success

Just to follow up on this thread.

We sent the email out and the only tracking I could implement was how many clicks we received for each link in the email. I could not track email openings with the tracking software we are using.

We have something of 400 + members on the site and we received about 100 clicks in total, granted some users could click more than 1 link. If I assume at least 2 clicks per person that means at least 50 opened the email.

I think that's a good response and I checked the email in Outlook, Gmail and Hotmail. It seemed to look really good and consistent. In Gmail the site logo was missing but I styled the alt text of the image and it seems to have worked well.

 

[CiaranR]

I styled the alt text of the image

Thats something I would never have considered, what does the CSS for that look like?

img.class:alt{} no?

Is it widely supported? ie6, ff, outlook?

 

[mneylon]

If the email standards project takes off things will be a LOT easier

 

[webman1]

I have used Sendstudio for newsletters in the past.

It can tell you the following and more:

how many people opened the email
how many emails bounced
how many people clicked on whatever link is contained on your newsletter to reach your website
how many people unsubscribed from the newsletter

Pretty cool software

 

[mneylon]

How does it track open rates?

 

[CiaranR]

you can track open rates for anyone who has images on fairly easy with something like

$email = "user@domain.com";

echo "<img src='http://www.yourdomain.com/trackingimage.php?email=".$email."' />";

Then in trackingimage.php you have a simple script that records the email, time, ip whatever you want/can get really and outputs your image.

Not sure how they track people who don't download images

 

[Forbairt]

probably with images loaded from a server ? (which I always disable) or does it have a "responder has requested notification" feature which I always disable anyways.

 

[mneylon]

The problem with most of those open rate tracking things is that they use a web bug which most corporate email filters will block ...

 

[Forbairt]

I don't open emails as html ... so I guess you want to have your email as plain text as well (should have mentioned that originally)

And yeah gmail blocks the images .. though that said ... they generate a thumbnail of the images which can seem a bit strange (I'll assume they are attached images though)

 

[gav240z]

Think less elegant than that.

Thats something I would never have considered, what does the CSS for that look like?

img.class:alt{} no?

Is it widely supported? ie6, ff, outlook?

Think less elegant. I used a simple <span> element like so.
<span color="FF0000"><img src="http://www.etc..."></span>

Unfortunately when it comes to email marketing you can't rely on CSS much at all. Basically you need to style using all the old HTML standards.

 

[gav240z]

Great point.

I don't open emails as html ... so I guess you want to have your email as plain text as well (should have mentioned that originally)

And yeah gmail blocks the images .. though that said ... they generate a thumbnail of the images which can seem a bit strange (I'll assume they are attached images though)

Yeah I thought about that, In all honesty I prefer plain text emails too. I did mention this, but marketing wants images in the email (*Sigh*).

 

[gav240z]

The problem with most of those open rate tracking things is that they use a web bug which most corporate email filters will block ...

Yes especially if you use a 1x1 pixel gif image. I suppose open rates should be taken with a grain of salt and really should only be used to measure improvement and not actual real world data.

 

[gav240z]

Looked at mail chimp

I have used Sendstudio for newsletters in the past.

It can tell you the following and more:

how many people opened the email
how many emails bounced
how many people clicked on whatever link is contained on your newsletter to reach your website
how many people unsubscribed from the newsletter

Pretty cool software

I was looking at software called Mail Chimp, In fact most of what I learnt about email marketing was on their website. I'd use the service myself if it was in the budget, but for now the boss hasn't approved using a 3rd party service.

 

[Forbairt]

Yeah I thought about that, In all honesty I prefer plain text emails too. I did mention this, but marketing wants images in the email (*Sigh*).

Images give more consistant output unfortunately ... but break a lot of rules

 

[Forbairt]

Think less elegant. I used a simple <span> element like so.
<span color="FF0000"><img src="http://www.etc..."></span>

Unfortunately when it comes to email marketing you can't rely on CSS much at all. Basically you need to style using all the old HTML standards.

I've never actually tried to format the alt for an image using CSS ... I take it its possible so ?