Few Email Mistake and Their Solution

What to watch

While making email

By: @ityu_hu

One picture mail

• In case the entire mail consists of a single big picture. What’s the problem with that? It cannot be seen when opening the mail, since the mailing programme does not load it automatically. The user opens it, sees nothing and either deletes it unread or marks as a spam, which is probably even the worse case.

• The mail should contain both picture and text. The picture should be rather a design element, should enrich the creative but shouldn’t have such information on it that it is unseen to the user without pictures. Everything that is crucial should be a text.

JavaScript in the mail

• It is not a common mistake, however still happens that javascript code is placed into the mail with different aims. This is the most certain way the mail lands in the spam folder.

• We simply shouldn’t put anything else into the mail, which should fit there. Any function that needs javascript or another script, is appropriate on an external page and we can direct it there in the mail.

CSS positioning

• The mail is not a homepage. Those CSS tricks and methods do not apply here that became conventional by completion of a homage. There isn’t any absolute position, rounded corners etc.

• To arrange elements use chart, every picture should be fixed in terms of size and should also have a background. Not every client supports backgrounds.

Absolute path to the pictures

• Meanwhile editing, your programme will know where e.g. the ../../images shows, but if you upload the pictures and the mail to the server, blank parts will appear instead of pictures.

• You safe yourself time if you upload the mails to the server during their completion and insert them so into the code.

• e.g.: http://example.com/newsletter/headpicture.jpg

FrontPage, MS Word, Publiser programmes

• HTML generated by them are considered by clients as „junk code”. Besides that it does not comply with the clients, creates impenetrable code dump, which if you’d like to edit, convert the creative then you will need all your insistence and patience.

• Every programme fits for editing, whereby HTML can be edited that is appropriate for that. You should sort and try them out, but write the code, don’t let it generated!

CSS class, ID

• You write for nothing into the HEAD part by which class and ID it should adjust and colour the text and pictures. GMail and Yahoo treats them quite poorly for example and we don’t get the effect we’ve waited for, just wasted our time.

• Use inline css in your mail, define everything there that belongs to your mail.

• In the HEAD part declarations regarding mailing clients appear, which are also taken into consideration.

Few Email Mistakes and Their Solutions

By Istvan Nagy

@ityu_hu

Further ReadingMailChimp blog

Litmus blog

EmailMonks

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