Around 80% of emails sent by advertisers reach their recipients’ inboxes… What about the remaining 20%? Why don’t they end up in the inbox?
It is thought that an email’s content accounts for 25% of its deliverability.
Therefore you should pay particular attention to content (text, pictures, etc.) as well as code (quality, conformity, size, etc.) to avoid your newsletter being classed as spam.
All internet or webmail service providers have their own deliverability policy and update it according to the market and new practices.
They seldom reveal the key to their systems, so you should keep things simple to be sure your email will arrive properly in all mailboxes.
To do this, you just need to follow a few essential points when putting together this HTML document, to optimise it for all existing mailboxes.
1. The image-to-text ratio
Adding images and/or illustrations to an email certainly makes it more attractive.
However, too many visuals will significantly increase your risk of being considered a « spammer ».
Apart from the fact that you must always provide alternative text for the images, you should also allow for nearly as many text zones (HTML text) as image zones.
You should start thinking about this at the design stage.
Tip: text above and below the graphic is a good tip to improve the image/text ratio.
2. Use tables
It’s true, mailboxes only support tables.
The technical code used in mailshots is different from the “classic” code used in websites.
Although web standards have standardised the code for browser display, email clients interpret it in their own way (which differs from one client to another), and not always correctly. Certain techniques (in particular CSS) are not applicable in this area.
You therefore need to make sure you follow good practice when creating emails.
3. Pictures
In most email clients (including Outlook – the most popular email software in the world – Gmail and Hotmail), pictures will not be displayed by default. Your readers must click a button to download and display pictures.
Using the “Alt” tag lets you provide information for readers if the pictures are not displayed, and also give valuable information to spam filters about the type of visuals used.
You must hard code your picture dimensions so they are correctly displayed in all cases (IE6 tends not to display pictures where the dimensions are not provided).
Also remember to add style=”display :block;” to your pictures, to avoid spaces appearing under them when they are displayed in the email.
4. Go back to HTML 4
Use html 4 and CSS inline rather than the style tag or external CSS file.
Examples :
- <font face=”Arial” size=”2″ color=”#333333″>Lorem ipsum</font>
- <span style=”font-size:12px; color:#000000;”>Lorem ipsum</span>
Tip: the Campaign Monitor website has created a table listing the CSS supported by the various webmail and email programs, which you can see at the following address: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/
5. Take care over your content
Avoid content with videos, attachments, Flash, iFrame, etc. As well as being too large, these items are often not well supported by webmail and email programs.
6. No JavaScript
Either JavaScript will be removed, or a security message will be displayed to your recipients. For security reasons, webmail programs remove the “script” tag when displaying emails. Therefore there is no point creating JavaScript effects in your emails, and it could even hinder you by making your email seem harmful.
7. Anchors
Anchors are not supported by webmail and email programs, so don’t try using them in your newsletters.
8. Take care to encode characters
Emails where the characters do not display properly are considered junk mail by spam filters. Therefore you need to encode all special characters (€, é, à…)!
9. Pay attention to size
The size of your newsletter must not exceed 200kb. Making your newsletter too big can have adverse effects. Either the newsletter will not get past the spam filters, or if it does, it will take too long to display and there is a good chance the reader will not have the patience to wait for it!
10. Test your newsletter
We can’t say it enough: each email client has its own standards and displays newsletters more or less correctly.
Even if you have run many tests to establish the compatibility of each email client’s standards, you must check that your newsletters display properly in most email clients.
Tip: testing your newsletter in Internet Explorer (preferably 6 or 7) during development will show up any bugs or faults very quickly.
A final word of advice
- The width of your newsletter should not normally exceed 650 pixels, because the display in a mailbox is narrower than in a web browser.
- Never send a newsletter with a picture and no text. You will be seen as a spammer straight away.
Happy development!