Coding for email is still way behind the coding required for a web browser. Email readers are pretty basic when it comes to HTML so that requires coders to dust off their historic coding practices and go old school. Here are some hints to polish up your eDM code.
1) Back to basics
Ah! Remember the old days of HTML? None of these fancy CSS structures and divs; instead, it’s back to lovely old tables for content layout. Many email clients wouldn’t know a div if it bit them on the behind so best to avoid them altogether.
2) Size matters
Keep your file size low (another reason not to have stacks of images). Not only will larger file sizes slow down the process of downloading for the customer, but also, big emails could be flagged as spam.
3) No background images
If your designer has used a background image, smack his bottom and send him back to his Mac to start again. Many email readers (including biggies like Hotmail and AOL) don’t render background images correctly, so don’t create an email that relies on background images entirely. Background colours are fine, but again, it can be easy to go overboard.
4) Relative links? No, absolutely not!
This is an obvious one but still a very common mistake. Relative image links (e.g., /images/bottom.jpg) will break as the email client won’t know where to find the ‘image’ file. Your image paths should be absolute (e.g., http://www.katetoon.com/emails/images/piglet.jpg).
5) Use Alt tags on images
As many users won’t be seeing the images (especially if they’re a first time receiver who hasn’t added your address to their safe sender list), it’s important to include the images’ Alt tags (hopefully provided by your copywriter). I’m not sure if any one really reads these but they are useful in text only image clients where the image will be replaced entirely by the Alt attribute.
6) Use inline styles
Several email readers (including Hotmail, Gmail and Outlook) will ignore all content between the <head></head> tags including any style definitions you’ve set. This means you have to style your HTML using inline styles but, again, keep it basic as many common CSS properties will not render correctly.
7) Avoid animated gifs, forms and rich media
Don’t embed rich media files such as Flash, forms or animated gifs. They fatten up your file’s size and most often plain just don’t work. Email is not the place for interactivity: get your customers to your website and they can play with flashy things to their hearts’ content.
8 ) Define the height and width of all images
Ensure you define the height and width of all images. This means that, even if the images are ‘turned off’, the email will still hang together and keep its structure.
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