

Designing a modern email - efedorenko
http://blog.postmarkapp.com/post/47718375205/designing-a-modern-email

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na85
Perhaps a more fitting title would be "designing a modern spam message"?

Those emails are exactly the kind of emails that I never read.

~~~
m_d
While you may never read them, a surprising number of people do. I had an
internship where my primary responsibility was composing HTML emails that went
out to users on a weekly basis. If I remember correctly, the majority of our
users opened the emails, and roughly 5-10% clicked on a link to content on the
site. I imagine these number vary quite a bit, but for a site with a paid
membership we saw a lot of traffic from HTML newsletters.

~~~
Demiurge
Yes, spam is a profitable business, that's probably why there is so much more
of it than personal email.

~~~
m_d
I don't see how opt-in messages from a paid service qualify as spam.

~~~
Demiurge
I get a lot of opt-in messages that I didn't really opt-in for, as does
everyone. How many people do you think even know what 'opt-in' is ?

~~~
snowwrestler
Do you get any email you did really opt-in for? If so, just think of those.

~~~
Demiurge
No, I don't receive any mass-delivered email that opted-in for, because if I
wanted to read something generic I would go to the relevant website or blog. I
do, of course, receive some 'group email' which is equally relevant to all the
recipients, but the sender obviously had all of us, recipients, in mind when
writing the email. And I'm not even opposed to mass-emails, it's just obvious
that for the most part these emails are not relevant to the recipients, and
adding any styling to these advertisements isn't making them any more relevant
or useful.

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joshuacc
And once again, the anti-HTML zealots are out in force, declaring that just
because they don't like HTML email, no one else should be permitted to receive
HTML email.

A counterpoint:

I subscribe to several HTML newsletters, and the fact that they are in HTML is
a huge advantage to me. It means that JavaScript Weekly (Peter Cooper's
newsletter) isn't just a mass of URLs. And it means that I can quickly preview
the newest fonts from FontShop without having to visit their site.

You may not like HTML email, but it has tangible benefits to many of us.

~~~
FireBeyond
Kinda impressive how many zealots, near-luddites HN has - I think some of the
opinions on this topic are more passionate than OS or editor wars.

~~~
subsection1h

        Kinda impressive how many zealots, near-luddites HN
    

Disliking HTML email makes someone a near-Luddite?

~~~
FireBeyond
No - not at all, but making absolutist claims about it, and about how no-one
should have to "endure" it, does - and there are multiple comments of that
nature in this thread.

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acuozzo
Nobody wants to receive e-mails like this.

~~~
dsabanin
Well if people read them and click on the links from these emails, then you
must be wrong. Surprise! Did you even read the post?

If you don't want them, it doesn't mean nobody does. There's also an
unsubscribe link at the bottom.

~~~
acuozzo
Yes, I read the entire post from beginning to end. I still wholeheartedly
believe that nobody wants e-mails like this. Yes, I'm speaking in absolutes
and yes, I don't give a damn.

> If you don't want them, it doesn't mean nobody does.

Correct. I chose to speak in absolutes to make a point.

> There's also an unsubscribe link at the bottom.

That's wonderful, but I'm pretty sure the terminal emulator I'm running Alpine
in doesn't do automatic URL lexing...

HTML is for the WWW. Please keep it out of e-mail. Thanks.

~~~
nivla
Curious, without HTML do you expect everyone to copy-paste confirmation and
password reset links? How do you account for broken links due to message
truncate or unicode rendering? What about aligning various sections of the
message? Controlling the font size of header, body and footer?

HTML has as much history in emails as it does in the web. Taking HTML out of
email is as hard as trying to take the Smart Phone out of phones today.

~~~
acuozzo
> Curious, without HTML do you expect everyone to copy-paste confirmation and
> password reset links?

Yes, I do.

> How do you account for broken links due to message truncate or unicode
> rendering?

I've never encountered a broken hyperlink due to message truncation or Unicode
rendering. My terminal emulator is set to use the UTF-8 character-set. Please
provide an example or demonstration of this.

> What about aligning various sections of the message?

Text comes left-aligned in most of the world and right-aligned elsewhere. What
kind of alignment are you referring to here?

> Controlling the font size of header, body and footer?

What's the value in altering the appearance of the text you want to send to
someone?

> HTML has as much history in emails as it does in the web.

Incorrect.

> Taking HTML out of email is as hard as trying to take the Smart Phone out of
> phones today.

I don't have a "smart" phone. What can I gain by owning one?

~~~
nivla
>Please provide an example or demonstration of this.

There are two limits that this standard places on the number of characters in
a line. Each line of characters MUST be no more than 998 characters, and
SHOULD be no more than 78 characters, excluding the CRLF. [1]

>What kind of alignment are you referring to here?

>Controlling the font size of header, body and footer?

I am talking about visual separations within the message. In pure text,
everything carries the same weight, same font and same color. From the link of
the site in the header to the unsubscribe at the bottom gets prominently
displayed to you.

>Incorrect.

Well I couldn't find any reliable information to counter that. However as far
I can remember, HTML emails have existed in the early days of Hotmail and
Yahoo.

[1]<http://mailformat.dan.info/body/linelength.html>

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Demiurge
Modern email should be completely banning any markup but spaces, going to
UTF-8-32 encoding. Maaaybe increasing the maximum column width from 80 to 120,
but that's stretching it (hehe).

------
jmharvey
If the goal is to make an email feel like it's written by a human being, why
not emulate what human emails actually look like? Does the author photo
actually make it feel more human, or less? I can't think of a time I've ever
gotten a real-person email that included a picture of the sender.

~~~
efedorenko
Because this would be a lie. We don't try to fool our users by sending them
fake personal emails - who would believe that CEO actually emails every new
user? But we want to show that there is a really small team behind the
product, and you can get in touch with anyone just by replying to email. Every
reply goes directly to the person who wrote email, not a support inbox.

------
joshuahedlund
> 79% of your readers spent longer than 2+ seconds looking at your email

I understand how opened emails can be tracked without javascript, via server
hits to img files, but what magic allows you to track _how long_ it was
opened?

~~~
mnutt
Use the tracking pixel and hold the connection open. When the user goes to the
next email, the connection will close and you'll have the length of time they
viewed it.

------
B5geek
Html in email is bad.evil.wrong.stupid. When will these people get it?

~~~
3825
I like plain text as well but I dislike the fact that it looks so ugly. Why do
we need to insert line break at 72 (or something) characters? Can't we wrap
text emails?

~~~
aidenn0
There's an RFC that nobody uses for rich-text e-mails.

[edit] found it! <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1523>

~~~
3825
Perhaps I need to think about what I don't like about html-formatted emails. I
can't really put my finger on anything. I am not against html when I think
about it. It just feels like it is not the right tool for the job. (I know I
am doing a pretty poor job at explaining myself. Sorry!)

~~~
aidenn0
I don't like them either, for the exact same reason!

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jhammer
I'm one of the developers for the Direct Mail app mentioned in the article.
Would be happy to answer any questions. Thanks for the interesting post!

~~~
Jgrubb
I'd never heard of it, but just gave it a spin and it's really impressive.

I work for a decent sized publishing co that sends a lot of email newsletters
as part of it's core biz. I know this e3 thing is part of your service, but is
there any planned integration with something like Exact Target (via API, not
just SMTP)? Thanks!

~~~
jhammer
Thanks! We have additional integrations planned, but if you have something in
particular in mind, please drop me (Jonathan) a note:
<http://directmailmac.com/support>. Thanks for the feedback!

------
aresant
I want to underline one change they made that in my experience makes a huge
impact: GET RID OF THE HEADER / LOGO

This is one of the basic steps that I've seen drive conversion almost every
time be it ecommerce checkout / lead gen / email / etc.

The header distracts from your content, eliminate it or limit it as much as
possible, especially when you have somebody that's already engaged (somebody
added to cart, joined your list, etc).

In email they did exactly the right thing - center the user on the brand w/the
"from address" or the title vs. wasting pixels in your content.

Several years ago I wrote about including company name in the email title as
an "Always" winner for email:

[http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/optimize-
your-e...](http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/optimize-your-email-
conversion-rate-with-3-quick-tips/)

------
systematical
Side note, anyone remember Google Wave?

