Loren McDonald offers 20 HTML design tips in three key areas: format, functionality and usability. He covers issues that affect how your message appears, including coding, images, message width and file size.

Format:

• Code emails by hand if you can.
• Avoid nested tables.
• Do not use canvas background images.
• Host images on your Web site instead of embedding them in emails.
• Avoid 1×1 pixel spacer gifs.
• Avoid using Cascading Style Sheets.
• Keep HTML Emails to 500 to 650 pixels wide.
• Keep message file size under 100 KB.

Usability:

• Validate HTML content.
• Avoid scripting if you can.
• Link to a Web version of your email message.
• Use image alt tags.
• Redesign the top of your email template so that readers will see your key content, even if they don’t see the images.
• Use horizontal layout rather than vertical.
• Incorporate both text and HTML and use alt tags, color and graphics instead of live images linked to your Web site.

Functionality:

• Provide lots of active links to content at your Web site.
• Navigation through your email should reflect your Web site navigation – don’t use different terms.
• Add functionality such as Send-to-a friend…carefully.
• Add a subscriber-management section to each template.
• Host rich-media functions such as inline audio, video or Flash on your Web site instead of embedding them in an email.

Read the full article here.

Popularity: 10%

Many companies risk losing subscribers because they fail to consolidate internal email operations. Here’s how and why to make that change.

I recently read an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal about the selection process for the coxswain for the U.S. Olympic rowing team. One of the competitors for the job had a bit of a problem at the World Championships in Japan in the final seconds of an early heat. The U.S. boat was ahead with 500 meters to go when the Italian team began to catch up. The coxswain responded to this by instructing the eight-man crew, “Blades up. Legs down. Speed through.” As the article noted, “He wasn’t supposed to. ‘Speed through’ tells a crew to angle its oars so they cut through water faster, raising the stroke count. He should have said, ‘Power,’ ordering the same number of strokes, only stronger ones.”

Full Article

Popularity: 12%

CAPTIVA ISLAND, Fla. — Email marketing analytics have led Dela Quist, CEO of London shop Alchemy Worx, to discover a sweet spot for how long subject lines should be.

He says open rates climb when the subject lines are in the 50-character range or 80-character range. But, perhaps counterintuitively, they fall in the middle when the length is 60 or 70.

The magnetic Quist gave the keynote address Saturday at MediaPost’s Email Insiders Summit conference: “Emailing People Not Lists: Using Customer Based Metrics to Drive Performance Improvement.”

Research culled from 250 million messages sent over the past two years, with 660 different subject lines, has led him to believe that a 50-character subject line touting a “powerful” offer is appealing (30% off Spring Getaway flights to Florida on Delta).

And a longer 80-character-plus line describing a newsletter in enticing fashion works (Find out Secrets to Spice up your Barbecue this weekend and all Summer Long and enter to win a New Weber Grill.)

Somehow, in the 60- to-70-character middle, he says, the subject line is either too long or not long enough.

Quist has various theories, but one is that the longer the subject line, the better chance a marketer has of presenting different concepts that may appeal to different consumers and boosting open rates. So in the above example, some may be interested in the ways to improve their grilling, while others would seek the new grill, leading to higher open rates.

Quist’s research–his clients include PayPal and Intercontinental Hotels in the U.S.–showing that “long subject lines work better” goes against conventional wisdom, he said.

“Our experience tended towards the belief that long subject lines work better,” he said. (The longer the better goes against conventional wisdom.) A more descriptive subject line can also build goodwill with consumers, since it can provide enough info to easily either turn them on or turn them off.

Popularity: 34%

While it may seem like the natural partner to web development, the art of email marketing comes with a whole new set of important steps to take if you want that newsletter to pay dividends. Ben Chestnut lays down ten top tips for anyone wondering how best to approach that tricky first campaign.

Continue reading →

Popularity: 13%

Time. Wouldn’t it be great if we all had a little more? What would you do with an extra hour in the day? Would you…

A.) Spend it with your best friend?
B.) Take a walk in the woods?
C.) Get lost in the latest bestseller?
D.) Dine at your favorite restaurant?
E.) Read more email?

Continue reading →

Popularity: 11%