Here you will find the ten most important steps to consider when drafting HTML email messages.
Enter the focal contents of your message in the space between 7 centimeters in height and 600 pixels in width
For recipients who are equipped with email programs that contain a preview panel, or who simply need to click on the subject to open the message, the situation remains absolutely unchanged.
Therefore, regardless of the email software used to receive your messages, these must have the main content inserted with a maximum size of 600 pixels x 7 centimeters, in order to give the reader an immediate overall and synthetic view of the entire message, for ensure that he is later motivated to read the entire message.
Therefore the summary of the contents, your sales proposition, your call to action and any information suitable to attract the navigator to read the entire content, must be inserted in that space.
Consequently, avoid using graphics that are too heavy both in terms of pixels and in terms of displayed size.
In fact, in the first case you would run the risk that your logo or what is described in the inserted image are not loaded by the recipient's program, while in the second you would give less space to the contents which must already appear in the preview panel or when opening the message .
Make your text links look like links
If you want to get the highest click-through rate, format your links so that they stand out as such within your message.
Usually the links should be underlined and colored electric blue and in wide format.
However, if your graphics prevent you from using the color blue, always remember to use underlining.
Never use graphical links in messages, such as buttons or similar objects, but if you feel the need to insert them, make sure that there is always a text link nearby.
Limit the use of images to the bare minimum.
Certainly images can strike the recipient and make him feel the importance of your brand and make your offers and promotions more attractive.
However, remember that most email programs are by default set so as not to load or display images.
And therefore visualization often implies a prior positive action on the part of the recipient.
If you insert too many images or if you make the few you have inserted too large and invasive, know that most of your recipients will see blank space instead of the images themselves.
It is true that some of the recipients will be able to view the images, but do not base the sale of your product and/or service and your advertising messages only on them.
Therefore I advise you to format your message in html so that your every important message is not trapped in an image.
Then also use alternative text (ALT) and a text title within the image tag to ensure that your main clauses appear even when the images are not loaded.
Include as little text as possible in terms of sales pitches and promotional content in the message
Typically an email message contains sales pitches and descriptive text content.
All this can be considered as the heart of any promotional message.
So don't create texts that are too long
In fact, you ran the risk of being placed in the recipient's spam box, or even being blocked by the recipient's server, because your contents exceeded the heuristic percentages of spam messages attributed to certain words (such as free, buy, etc. .).
So avoid boring the recipient with overly long texts
Therefore shorten the content to the bare minimum and use links that refer to the complete article, or to your product page, inserted on your website.
Make sure you respect the privacy policy
Include your email address in the message so that subscribers to your list can unsubscribe with a single mouse click or by replying to your message, and make sure that your message clearly shows that it is an advertising and promotional message, therefore commercial.
Make cancellation easy.
With any professional autoresponder software you can make the unsubscribe system ultra easy because it will only really be enough to click once on the link contained in the message, while with systems relating to external e-mail marketing services, this is practically impossible, and therefore you need to click at least 2 times.
While this may seem against your best interests, if you make it difficult for users to find an easy way to unsubscribe from your list you run the risk of your messages being marked as spam.
This can damage your reputation and the admissibility of your messages and block your online activity.
Therefore, and I will never tire of repeating this, make the system for unsubscribing easy and simple for subscribers so that they don't include you in spam.
In this regard, avoid inserting too much empty space between the body of the message and the cancellation link, because you would always get that negative effect by giving the impression of wanting to make cancellation difficult.
Personalize the subject and body of the message with the recipient's name
Your email message will be more effective if you personalize the subject and body of the message with the recipient's name.
Obviously remember not to insert this name further into the body, only once is enough.
There is an exception to this rule: that is, when the sector in which you operate has a target made up of users who, for privacy reasons, prefer not to see their name displayed in the subject and body of the message.
When you need to personalize the subject and body with the recipient's name, professional software can help you.
Avoid using internal style sheets and use style sheets external to the message (CSS)
Your message, governed by internal style sheets, may not be well interpreted by the email programs of the major internet service providers.
There are some ISPs, such as Gmail, which completely exclude the internal style sheet of the message, both from the head tag and from the body.
Therefore always make use of style sheets external to the message because you will be able to facilitate the correct display of the message by the recipient, because it will appear in a more orderly way, compared to a message from which the CSS style has been excluded.
You could possibly make use of the font and p tags within the message to easily create better message formatting, but without great demands.
Limit the use of words considered spam to the bare minimum
It is quite difficult to avoid using words that activate anti-spam devices.
So pay attention to your content because recipients' email programs check your messages for words that are considered spam and to which they assign a specific score.
When the sum of the scores for each word exceeds a specific limit, your message could be blocked both by the recipient's server and by the latter's email software.
To overcome this inconvenience, only professional autoresponder software contains a particular function that allows you to immediately see the spam score you have achieved.
But not only because with that software you will be able to find the words in your messages that have reached that total.
Always test the results of your messages
It is really important to verify the effectiveness of your efforts, test the results of your messages and normally you could do tests by changing only one element at a time, starting from the object and then moving on to other elements, such as graphics, etc.
But to proceed, obtaining certain results, divide your main list into several parts and send the various versions of your messages to each of them.
This way you can verify that the formatting you choose for your message is displayed correctly by different email service providers.
Furthermore, you will be able to examine the subject of the message and the graphics that are more attractive and convincing and ensure that your messages reach the right recipient's inbox, rather than the spam one.
The changes you make will allow you to choose for all the messages the optimization of the message that brought you the best results for that small group of recipients.