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2.1. The World of HTML Email
Updated 11.13.13
Ah, yes, HTML email creation. If you've been assigned with the impressive task of creating email templates and deliverable email camaigns, there are several things you should know. Building an email is not like building for the web. While web browsers continue their onward march towards standards, many email clients have stubbornly stayed put. Some have even gone backwards (Microsoft/Outlook, are you listening?). Then there are the major web-based email clients like Gmail and Hotmail, some holdout Lotus Notes users ... and you'll soon realize how different the email game is.
The key is to focus on three things.
- First, you should keep it simple. The more complex your email design, the more likely is it to choke on one of the popular clients with poor standards support.
- Second, you need to take your coding skills back a good decade. That often means nesting tables, bringing CSS inline and following the coding guidelines outlined below.
- Finally, you need to test your designs regularly. Just because a template looks nice in Hotmail now, doesn't mean it will next week.
To maintain your sanity, it's a good idea to decide exactly which email clients you plan on supporting when building a HTML email. While general research is helpful, the email clients your subscribers are using can vary significantly from list to list. If you have the time there are a number of tools that can tell you specifically which email clients your subscribers are using. Trust me, if the testing shows almost none of them are using a client like Lotus Notes, save yourself some frustration and ignore it altogether. Knowing which email clients you're targeting not only makes the building process easier, it can save you lots of time in the testing phase too. In the next several pages, we'll be sharing techniques that give the best results across all of the popular clients, including the notorious ones like Gmail, Lotus Notes 6 and Outlook 2007.
Have questions or need our expert HTML designers to get involved? Just let us know. Our talented folks are always for hire to help with your design and campaigns. And, in some cases, we include full-access to them with our NewPanda Enterprise programs.