I see a lot of emails every day. A lot. Most are good, some are great and few have some mistakes. Most of the issues are relatively minor and may not affect display or perception of the email at all.

But every once in a while I see something that makes me stop and say “Really?”

Here’s some of those “Really?” mistakes and some tips on how to avoid them.

Not designing for the preview pane.

Seriously, who actually opens an email anymore? Most people just look email in the preview pane without ever double-clicking to open it. So why would you design your email like they would? That 1000+ pixel wide email might look great in your maximized browser window, but what happens when the recipient looks at it in their 700pixel wide Outlook preview window? A deleted email, that’s what. There’s really two big factors in at play here, the size of the preview pane and the fact that the inbox is a terribly busy place. You don’t have much time to make an impression and not a lot of space either. So what to do?

• Don’t design too wide. Try to keep the total email width between 600 and 700 pixels. That range will most always display within the preview pane. Sure there might be a few recipients out there with even smaller preview panes but most recipients should have no problems with 600 – 700 pixels.
• Get your company logo in the upper-left corner of your email.
• Try to keep your call to action above the scroll in the top third of the email. Typically you’ve got about 400 pixels of vertical area to work with.
• Consider adding a table of contents to the top of your mail so that users can at a glance see what you’ve got in the mail.

Assuming images will work

Most email programs turn off images by default. Users have to click a button or right click on a image to load the images in a mail. It’s a privacy thing. So always assume that images will be turned off when the mail is delivered and don’t count on recipients turning them on. Send a test of your mail and look at it with the images off. Does it still make sense?
What to do about “images off”

• Add alt-text to your images. Alt-text is an attribute that is added to the image tag in the HTML, it includes a short description of the image. You might add something like “Our latest sprocket. Right-click here to view the image.” Much more compelling than the little red broken image box, eh?
• Don’t put important content into images. The good stuff goes in text, the images support it.

Too many images, not enough text

Yep, we’ve seen it too many times. the email that’s just one (or two, or three) gigantic images all displayed in a line. Sure, it looks magnificent but it’s empty on the inside. Send out an all image email or an email in which the only text is a link or two and you’re bound to be dismissed as spam. Like we said in item one, the inbox is a busy, busy place. People make gut decisions about what gets sent to the junk folder and marked as spam and emails made of one big image are the first to go.

No plain text version

Why would you pass up the text version of your email? It’s a simple way to make sure that your email is accessible across the widest possible audience. I know that the great majority of users have the capability to view HTML email but the are some who don’t and some who choose not to receive HTML email. Emails delivered through ReachMail are sent as a two-part message, one part HTML, one part text. These multi-part messages allow the correct content to display for each user. If they’ve set their preferences to not display HTML email then the text only version will show up. Of course if you didn’t fill out the plain text copy of the mail then they get nothing.

Too fancy

Like I’ve said before, the inbox is a very busy place, you don’t have much time to make an impression. Simplify, man, simplify. If you’re sending a promotional mail don’t jam all your fancy graphics and words into the mail. Consider a short, compelling message that gets people to click a link. Once they click the link they’re engaged and on their way to your landing page where you will blow their mind with lovely graphics and spellbinding copy. Bonus, you can look at the link tracking and see exactly who clicked a link and then follow up with them.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with me at dnielsen@reachmail.com

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