‘Sending Email’ Articles

This is by far one of the most commonly asked questions that we get here at Admail.net. Our users expect, and rightfully so, to see exactly what they have created in our editor to appear in their recipient’s email inbox. We completely understand this expectation and we too wish it could always work out that way. We’ve gone to great lengths to make our email editor as compatible as possible with every email client, but the simple fact is that we can’t make it absolutely compatible for every email client simultaneously.

To understand why there is sometimes a difference between what you see in a preview and what you see in an email client, you must understand that each individual email client (Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail, Apple Mail, Hotmail, etc.) renders the HTML it receives differently. It’s similar to how viewing a website in a different browser can cause viewing problems. In reality each and every email client that receives your email will render it differently, no matter how slight the difference. I say this in part to alleviate some of the pressure you are feeling to have you email be perfect for every single recipient, it’s impossible. No one is going to see the intended email and the one they actually receive side-by-side, so if there are small differences, they will be none the wiser. That being said, we completely understand your concern and know that there is a level of deviation that is acceptable and one that is not.

Our email templates have been designed to be as compatible with all email clients as possible. We have, of course, spent more time on compatibility with the major, most up to date email clients, so if you are viewing the email in a particularly old or obscure email browser, that may be where a display issue is originating.

If you experience a major display difference from your preview, check the email in several email clients to see if the problem is being relayed across the board. If not, you should check your email client to see if it is up to date. As always, if a problem persists you are welcome to give us a call so we can help you through it.

At times simplicity is the most effective means of communication. To get your point across with an email, there are occasions when all you need is a simple white background email with text.

There is more than one way to go about creating a plain white-paper email, but the most simple way is to do a plain text email. A plain text email is just text. There is no HTML code included in the message at all. While this means that there are no complications and that your message is slightly (though likely by a negligible amount) more deliverable, it also means that your message will not be able to include links, images, or advanced formatting of any kind. Emails like this are useful if you think your clients will be viewing them on a mobile device, if their email clients don’t allow HTML code, or if you simply want to deliver a complication free, simple, but highly deliverable email.

The other way to create a email with a white background and text is to use one of our white-paper templates. These templates are created to be as simple as possible but still allow you to include links, pictures, font formatting and other content features only available with HTML code. Not only will you have more control over the content of your email, but you will get more information from Accu Trak when using a white-paper template as opposed to a plain text email. Clickthrough tracking is available only in full HTML emails.

Each method has its own pros and cons, you can use the information in this post to pick which is best for your campaign. No matter which you choose, always remember that content is the most important part of your email both for deliveribilty and effectiveness.

We’ve covered a lot of ways to improve your email campaigns in our numerous blog posts. We get so many questions about best practices and how to improve campaign results that we thought that we’d gather up all of our best practices tips and put them in one place. Here is a list of our favorite “Best Practices”.

1. Write great subject lines.

This first rule of email marketing, subject lines are the first things your customer will see and can be the deciding factor in how much attention they give your email. Don’t rush the writing of your subject line. Come up with several different ideas, and chose the one you think would appeal most to your customer. Be honest and avoid the hard sell,  also stay away from SPAM language and your subject line will support your well thought out campaign.

2. Don’t forget the preview pane!

The preview pane is the handy little window that exists in email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird. It shows a preview of the email before it is actually “opened”. It’s so useful in fact, that many people read their emails almost exclusively through this window. Create your email so that the most important part of your offer or message is visible in the preview pane. This means the top section of your email is very important as would be the case regardless since grabbing your reader’s interest quickly is your primary goal anyway.

3. Avoid SPAM language.

Chances are good that you’ve gotten a SPAM message in your email inbox. Have you ever noticed how they all seem share the same language? SPAM stoppers have been designed to pick up on this recurring “language of SPAM” by using Bayesian style filters. These filters have been popular for years and use common “SPAM words” to block potential SPAM messages. Actually, it’s fairly complicated and if you’d like you can read more here. The general idea is that avoiding certain words and phrases can make your email more deliverable. We’ve compiled a list of some of the words to avoid in our Email and Spam Blockers FAQ.

4. Make it look good.

Despite the common advice to not “judge a book by its cover”, all people have a tendency to make snap judgments. Bad design can detract from the positives in your email and can ruin your campaigns potential for success. Not every email needs to be a work of art, but take some time and objectively view your email. Ask yourself, “Does it look like SPAM? Would I be comfortable giving my credit card information to this company?” Make your campaign look professional and your clients will be more apt to click your links and buy your products.

5. Treat your recipients like real people.

In the world of bulk email, treating your clients with a respectful and personal touch can be the difference between success and failure. Email has the tendency to be cold and impersonal. If you manage to find a way to break the mold and connect with your recipients, you will give them a refreshingly positive experience that is sure to drive results.

6. Focus on meaningful content.

Find out what your customers want and give it to them. Too many marketers get so wrapped up in their own product that they forget about the consumer. If you provide your recipients with something valuable, your campaign will be a success. Blatant solicitation without value is a waste of everyone’s time and your money.

7. Establish your brand.

If you are already producing content that your recipients actually want, the next step is to ensure that they don’t overlook your email. Maintaining cohesive design and messaging will make your email familiar and allow your recipients to pick your email out of a crowd. If they have a high traffic inbox, this strategy can be crucial to the success of your campaign.

8. Include an offer.

Including an offer is a fantastic way to attract attention. Avoid being misleading at all costs, if the customer feels lied to, you’ve just lost a customer. Exclusive offers are more attractive and have the potential of prompting recipients to forward the email to a friend. Free marketing doesn’t get any better than that!

9. Avoid large images.

Large images give your email a higher probability of tripping SPAM filters and may also ruin your email design. You may want to show off pictures in high resolution but an email is not the place to do it. Include a thumbnail of the image and have it link to the full sized image hosted elsewhere.

10. Ask to be on their list.

There is no better way to ensure that your future emails don’t wind up in a willing recipients SPAM folder than just asking nicely. Ask your customers to add you to their contact list and, in most email clients, your message’s delivery will be ensured. You can include this request in your first campaign or in all of your campaigns.

11. Know and follow CAN-SPAM regulations.

This one is simple, CAN-SPAM regulations are the law and if you break them you could find yourself with a hefty fine and a nasty mark on your reputation. Avoid these problems by understanding the regulations before starting any email campaign.

12. Study major email providers policy.

Professionals in any field always do their homework. They know more about their topic than anyone else and they use that knowledge to their advantage. If you want to be a pro in the email marketing world, you need to know the policies of the major email providers. You wouldn’t ship goods somewhere without knowing the docking regulations of the port, so don’t be uninformed of the rules and regulations of companies like Yahoo!, Google, or Microsoft.

In previous posts we have described a condition with which many email marketers are afflicted. This “disease” can break down a marketer, bringing progress to a halt with confusion and distress.

Analytic paralysis is the condition of being completely hung up on the analytic reports of your emails. Those with this illness disregard common sense and place too much importance on numbers they don’t quite understand.

Today I hope to cure some cases of analytic paralysis by discussing the email open rate. The email open rate refers to the number of people who have opened and read your email. It was created for the purpose of giving marketers a way to see how many people opened their emails rather than just deleting it on the spot; however, these numbers are almost always blurred and don’t give accurate real time representations of how many recipients actually read your email.

Why are the numbers skewed? Read below to gain a bit more understanding.

Statistics show that 84% of people 18-34 use an email preview pane. An email preview pane exists in email clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird. It allows you to view a preview of your email in a small window under or next to your inbox. The way opens are reported when an email is viewed in a preview pane is inconsistent. In many instances your recipient may have read your email in their preview pane but their view will not register as an open.

Email open rates are collected based on a hidden image placed into your email. When this hidden image is loaded the recipient can be counted as an open. Many email programs, including Outlook and Gmail, block images automatically. Meaning, users who have viewed your image will not be counted as an open unless they go out of the way to allow the images of your email to be seen, something many people don’t do even if they value the content of the email.

So what does this all mean to you, an email marketer trying to find a good way to judge the success of your emails? Basically it means that open rates are a great way to compare a campaign against one another, but not for much else. If your open rates increase or decrease drastically you’ll know you’re either doing something right or your screwed up.

Open rates are not a good way to judge the individual success of a campaign or your email marketing efforts in general. A low open rate may seem discouraging, but the percentages reported can be very misleading. An open rate percentage should not be used as a hard and fast number to report how many people you have reached. A more effective judge of success of any email campaign is the click-through rate. Click-throughs are recorded more accurately and give you a sense of who has acted based on your email. Action, of course being the goal of any marketing effort.

Don’t let the numbers throw a wrench in your efforts. If you are doing the right things in your email campaign such as providing valuable content, avoiding spam flags and sending to a good list, you will have success.

Avoid analytic paralysis by remembering this information and don’t forget, advertising can only bring customers to your product, you are responsible for giving them something of quality that they truly want or need. No amount of advertising, despite it’s brilliance, can maintain a product lacking in value.

You don’t have to be a programmer, developer, or graphic designer to be a good email marketer. You certainly don’t have to be a wiz with CSS or Javascript. Good email marketing requires nothing more than an employee who understands their customers and who can provide valuable content. That being said, having a basic understanding of the technology you are dealing with can be a great help and it may just save you from some serious technology induced headaches.

When something goes wrong and your email doesn’t look or function the way you want it to, what do you do? Many email marketers use HTML creation programs like frontpage, dreamweaver, or other template based systems to create good looking emails with little to no knowledge of HTML. These can be extremely helpful tools but they don’t always translate perfectly to email. So when a problem does arise where will you turn?

By learning some rudimentary HTML code you could solve many of these problems yourself. I’m not suggesting you spend days or even weeks to become an expert or even to memorize any code. If you’d like you could simply print out this blog or any of the more complete HTML cheat sheets online, and use it as an instant reference. At any rate, understanding some basic HTML code and finding out how it all functions will give you a valuable tool set and make you a greater asset in the workplace.

I’ve listed and explained some of the most simple and common HTML tags here.

<p>: This indicates the start of a paragraph, as with all HTML code the tag must be closed after the element is complete. Therefore at the end of a paragraph you would complete the tag by putting a closing tag like so </p>

Example: <p>This is my newest email!</p>

<img src=”insert location here” />: This is the appropriate tag to insert an image into html. Note that if you use a image location on your local machine others will NOT be able to view it. This problem occurs when using pictures from your computer in frontpage and then copying that HTML code. You will be able to see the pictures but no one else will. You need to use a location that is hosted somewhere on the web, in my example you will see that I used a image hosted on Admail.

Example: <img src=”https://www.admail.net/thumbnail/154/”></img>

<a href=”insert internet address here”>link </a>: This is the HTML tag to create a link. The word or phrase in-between the opening and closing tag will be made into the link.

Example: <a href=”http://www.admail.net”>Visit Our Website!</a>

Other tags include <b>, this will make your font bold, and <i>, which will make your font italic.

These are very rudimentary tags but they will help you understand some of the more simple elements of HTML. For those interested in learning more, websites like www.w3schools.com provide an online knowledge base and free online training.

Armed with this knowledge you will have a better grasp of your medium and, with a bit of study and training, you may be able to troubleshoot your own problems, saving you and your company valuable time.

To recap:

<p>: Paragraph </p>
<img src=”/>: Image
<a href=”>: Link </a>
<b>: Bold </b>
<i>: Italic </i>