

Why beautiful email templates hurt your business - gavinballard
http://nathanbarry.com/email-templates-hurt-business/

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eli
Another thing not mentioned explicitly is that a huge number of emails are
opened on mobile devices (some say it's close to 50%). Many of these
beautiful, image-heavy email templates look awful on mobile.

Edit: And another another thing is that most email clients do not load images
by default so many of these beautiful templates look bad or even broken
without images.

The bottom line is, yes, there are a lot of reasons why a text-heavy message
is likely to perform better for you. But, as always, you should test it
yourself. It's super easy to A/B test an email message.

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nathanbarry
I actually implement this in MailChimp by choosing their most minimal
template, then removing all the extra design stuff. One thing I do like is a
max-width on the email so that if opened in a wide browser window the line-
length doesn't get too long.

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eli
Outlook doesn't support max-width (naturally).

Here's how to do it and also support outlook by using conditional comments:
<https://gist.github.com/elidickinson/5525752>

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ericclemmons
Knocking designed emails has been trending recently, and I don't see that much
justification for it.

Yes, I prefer text when images aren't warranted, but it seems to me that
presentation matters when there are competing contexts in the same message.

For example, I just for a response back from a renter on AirBnB. Because of
the presentation, I could tell which user it was from, which apartment it was
for, exactly what their message was, a helpful hint that I was "pre-approved"
and more.

Design and layout introduces clarity with content by providing context and
relationships.

Plain vs Pretty emails are both terrible if done poorly, but I'd argue Pretty
can accomplish much more than Plain when done right.

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imjared
"The true problem is that when crafting an email 95% of the time is spent
getting the design just right and only 5% is spent on the subject and
content."

I'm curious what shop you are thinking of that has this kind of time
breakdown? I know that in my previous agency (political/non-profit/corporate
consulting), the team responsible for emails spent hours and hours working on
crafting perfect subject lines and meaningful content. The subject and the
content drove the design.

~~~
nathanbarry
That's excellent that your team spent that much time on content. That's how it
should be. My experience has been the amateurs do exactly the opposite.

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madoublet
Big fan of your work, but here are a few things that raised red flags for me.

First, I make my "read" decision based entirely on the sender and subject. If
an email gets past that filter, I rarely put much thought into what it looks
like. Second, when I see an overly plain email, I tend to associate it with
those tricky spammers who try to circumvent filters. So, sometimes seeing a
brand is reassuring that it is not spam.

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bradleyland
Isn't this a testable hypothesis? Also, like many things marketing related,
there is no silver bullet. What works for one business/market may not work for
another. Long copy selling is a great example. Some people find it works
great; others, not so much.

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mnutt
I find the argument compelling, but why do you suppose so many large companies
send templates with lots of images? They have easy access to A/B testing, and
I imagine if they saw better results with the text-heavy emails they would all
switch to them.

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nathanbarry
It's two different kinds of markets. I'm sure those emails work well for big
companies that can never hope to have a personal connection with their
customers. That's not most of us on Hacker News.

For everyone running educational blogs or small SaaS applications you can make
all your interactions and training feel much more personal.

Though you shouldn't definitely test it.

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bluedino
I'd much rather receive an email like the example, showing giftcards that you
can redeem, instead of a bunch of text. At least in that case.

Am I evil?

~~~
nathanbarry
Ha, no. Gift cards are nice. Though hopefully the text emails teach something
valuable. Maybe a typical Best Buy advertisement would have been a better
example.

Also, (unrelated) you shouldn't redeem your Chase points for gift cards (as
shown in that email). $1,000+ international airline tickets are a much better
value. :)

~~~
bluedino
Not if you don't fly internationally ;)

I'm also thinking Joe consumer would rather see some big pictures of what's on
sale this week, or some new product announcement, instead of having to _read_

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johnward
You are "thinking". Split test it and find out for sure.

