Email Design

If you’re developing web pages, blogs or landing pages for your products or services, do you know how your beautiful pages look on other browsers and platforms? For example, I use Mac and my main browser is FireFox, and sometimes I use Apple’s own Safari. I also have a PC laptop for checking how my emails render on some PC email programs.

I just found about this web site which provides screen shots of any web page as seen through some 50 different browsers, on 4 different operating systems (PC, Mac, Linux and BSD). Take a look at http://browsershots.org/

Let me know how it worked for you! Please comment here.

Don’t copy what others are doing. Try to find your own style, your own voice. Again, you’re creating a relationship with your audience, and how can you do that if you’re copying someone else’s style?

The only way you can create that relationship is if you’re true to yourself, if you are who you are and you come across that way in everything you do, which includes your web site, your blog, your business card, and of course, your e-newsletter.

Programs such as Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird or online email services such as Yahoo, or Hotmail are not to be used. They may be free to use, but will not give you all the options you might like to have, and besides, may also be unlawful, depending on your country’s anti-spam laws, if any.

Most Internet Service Providers, and most online email services limit the number of recipients that you can use in any single email message. Usually that number is around 20, or so, and it varies widely from ISP to ISP. This means that, depending on the size of your list, it may take you several sends to complete the “blast”. Although this may be acceptable if you have a list of 50 or so people, anything beyond that will be impractical.

If you’re using your own email program to send your e-newsletter you don’t, for the most part, have no idea what happens to your beautiful creation once it leaves your computer. You don’t really know if your audience receives your messages, if they open them, if they click on any links that are included in the content, etc.

If you’re really strapped for cash, and have a small list I can recommend this new Email Service Provider called MadMimi. Their service is free for lists under 100 subscribers.

Last word on using your own email program: if you have to use it, please, remember to use the BCC: field for your recipients. BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy, and it simply means your recipients will not see each other’s names and email addresses.

If you are thinking of, or you already are, using email marketing to grow your business, then you’re a smart entrepreneur. Capturing email addresses of your clients and especially prospects, will enable you to follow up with them on a regular basis.

Next thing to do is use the right tools to publish/broadcast your email messages/newsletters. If you’re still using your own email program, please, stop now and do the right thing that will benefit your own business and your subscribers: get a subscription to one of the many available Email Publishing Systems, such as Aweber, GetResponse, Constant Contact, or the Swiss army knife of online toolkits, 1Shopping Cart.

OK, now you’ve covered the basics, you have a list of subscribers, and you’re using the right tools to reach them. So everything is fine, right? Yes, it should be, but most likely it’s not 100%. I am afraid to tell you, but, even with the right tools, your emails may not be reaching their targets as intended.

Let me explain. If you’re sending out your ezine in HTML format, are you sure it displays as intended on your subscribers’ screens? You see, the trouble with HTML email is that most email programs are not really designed to display HTML, as this is the purpose of web browsers. Although most email programs do have some HTML display capabilities, unfortunately none of them support the full HTML feature set.

For example, most email programs can’t read style sheets, if they are referenced as external files. Don’t even try using CSS for layout formatting (tables are safer). Features such as background images, for example, are not widely supported either; same thing with Flash animation, even GIF image animation won’t work in some email programs! JavaScript? Forget it! The list goes on and on.

So, what can you, as an ezine publisher, do? First of all, don’t assume if your email looks fine on your end that all is well. Instead, follow these three simple steps to ensure your subscribers see your messages as you want them to be seen.

1. Design Properly

If you’re just starting your ezine, make sure you design it with these limitations in mind, so that it displays properly in as many email environments as you possibly can. Hiring a professional designer who has not only done web page design, but HTML email design as well, will certainly help in the process.

2. Create Test Email Accounts

Sign up with as many free email accounts as you can find. At least do the main ones: Google Mail, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail and AOL/AIM Mail. Next, register a few domains with different registrars (I use NetFirms, GoDaddy and 1and1) and set up sample emails just for this purpose. Most domain registrars will offer at least one email account which you can access through their web mail applications. What, you don’t have more than one domain name registered? Please, go back to my bonus audio class and listen to the part about domain registration.

Then, create a number of accounts on your own domain that you will read using different PC and Mac programs, such as Outlook (Express), Eudora, Apple Mail, etc. For this purpose, you can name your email accounts PCEudora@yourdomain.com, and so on. In case you don’t have a Mac (or a PC), try asking a friend or your web designer who has one to read the emails for you.

3. Test, Test and Re-test

Once you have a list of a dozen or so test accounts, and your design is ready, test it extensively. Log in to your Email Publishing System. Create a list that will contain the email addresses of the various email accounts that you have previously created.

Now, send your message to this test group of email accounts as if you’re sending a regular broadcast. Log into your various online accounts and see how your HTML email renders in each and write down the differences, or print out the email. Do the same using the email programs you have on both PC and Mac computers.

Using the results of your tests, tweak your HTML template until you are satisfied with how it performs. You may find out that you need to drop some elements of the design of your ezine to get it to perform well in most situations. However, that’s a small sacrifice in exchange for making sure your messages display well for the largest number of your subscribers.

Don’t be alarmed if some versions of your email don’t look perfect, as you intended. No matter how much tweaking you apply, there will always be differences in how your email displays. However, the point of this exercise is to get a nice HTML template that works fairly well on all platforms, so that you can be reasonably sure your messages get across as intended.

The other day I was showing the online version of my ezine on email marketing to a client, and was quite surprised to see that the nicely designed layout did not display properly on his Windows PC (I personally use Apple Mac). For some reason, all of the text appeared centred, instead of left-aligned.

As soon as I got back to my home office I went in and changed one line of HTML code in my ezine template, and now I am hoping that’s fixed. Although I have tested my ezine template extensively, it’s impossible to test for all available systems and email programs. But this experience has prompted me to write an article on the very subject: problems in displaying HTML email. I hope it will help you in your own quality control efforts.