In my previous post, I gave you some simple guidelines to follow to create a good email template.
Here are some additional information:
- Go hold school with html
You’ll need to keep your email designs nice and simple. Avoid complicated layouts, too many embedded tables, and tables with too many rows and columns. A simple two column table with a row across the top is about as complex as you can get. There are lots of email applications that don’t cooperate when you code tables with colspans (table cells that “span” across multiple columns) in them.
Use separate tables for the header, body, then footer of our emails. Better to go with more “simple” tables, than one big “complex” table.
CSS ( cascading style sheet) is very handy for websites. However stay away from them when creating an email in html. Yahoo mail, Gmail, hotmail will not read your CSS and they will even delete them. Therefore your readers won’t see your email properly. It can do more damage than good.
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Don’t rely on using background image
If your email is only composed of one background image, the chance are that it will be doing poorly. Background images were heavily used in the past specially by US companies. However it is causing a big problem as if your recipient does not have the images option turn on in their email account, they will only see one blank email.
In addition, if you want to use a background colour, you’ll need to create a big, 100% wide “table wrap” around your email. Set yourbackground color in that table.
- Provide a link to a web-based version of your email near the top of your message.
This will become very helpful if your recipient cannot see the email properly in their email account.
- Use alternate text for important images.
When inserting your images, make sure to add your alternate text behind your images. This will help in case the recipient does not have the images turn on in their email account. They will still be able to what is the image about.
In addition, make sure to not use an image as your main call to action. For instance, if you have a buy now button in your email, I recommend you code it in plain html instead of inserting an image.
- Place the main click to action above the fold of the email.
Email success can be very simple if you follow some important rule. For instance, the call to action should always be at the top of the email, one in the header and one in the body. This is due to the fact that many email recipients are using the preview pan to see emails nowdays and therefore you need to let them very quickly find out what your email is about if you want them to take action.
- Test designs in different browsers.
I recently read a study made by a well known marketing company and it was written than around 40% of email marketers don’t test their emails before they send them out. This is a big mistake. You should always test your emails with different email account to make sure they will random properly. It might be seen as time wasting but believe me it can only do you some goods as you will find out that some emails might random properly with gmail and not in yahoo mail or vice versa.
