Tips On Developing HTML Emails and Email Templates (Part 2)

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008

This is a continuation on the first article I wrote on developing HTML emails and email templates. Let’s jump right into some tips:

Use HTML markup to style whenever possible. Use attributes like background=”" whenever possible. CSS backgrounds will incorrectly render in GMail, so whenever applicable, make sure your background will work if applied to a table cell (<td>)
Text, Text, Text. In most email applications, external images will require an action (such as clicking “Display all image below” before images are displayed. Do your best to use CSS and Font tags to style text instead of including large images so that the user still has an opportunity to see content before having to click on a prompt.
Emails have folds too. Like websites, emails will have folds (the portion of an email visible without having to scroll). The fold will be really high, because of headers and vertical space being taken up by applications or web applications. Keep that in mind when placing your call-to-action.
Support the ability to unsubscribe. At the footer of your email, provide the user an easy way to unsubscribe to the newsletter. He may be breaching agreements with your hosting company or ISP if you send unsolicited email without doing so.
Your subject line is more important then your email. You will lose a majority of your users before they even see your email. Be sure to take the time to think about a clever/catchy subject line for your target audience so that you can get more users into your email.

That’s all for now, hope that helps.