> The plain email—which took no time to design or code—was opened by more recipients and had 3.3x more clicks than the designed email.
I think this result needs more investigation. We need to know why people open plain email more than those fancy designed ones, rather than just having those numbers.
Designed email, for a lot of companies, is a matter of style, a VI (Visual Identity) for the receiver to remember. It's a good tool to differentiate your services from others.
Also, a well-designed email could increase the efficiency of email reading as you may already familiar with some email and their layouts, so you can guess it's content even you didn't actually read any word in it (Those "What's new" email from Twitter and Facebook for example).
If everybody start to send plain email today, then there will be a whole lot more of reading for the receivers to do.
So for me, I don't reject designed emails, as long as most content in the mail is what I needed. Maybe it's a notification, verification or something like that.
I hate some company send emails which heavily polluted with contents that have nothing to do with me, and if that email was also designed, I hate it even more.
> I think this result needs more investigation. We need to know why people open plain email more than those fancy designed ones, rather than just having those numbers.
I've seen plenty of people who make quite an effort not to receive/open anything that ain't plain text for simple security concerns.
Similarly, many design emails end up being displayed butchered for users due to adblockers/email provider/client blocking outside resources and links.
Imho: If I want a website like experience I can visit the website, emails should be reserved for simple text communications, without adding needless design bloat, but that's just my personal preference.
How do they know they are HTML before they open them?
Also, I read in plain text. If you want me to read it in HTML format, include a link to the web version and, if I'm interested, I will actually click on that - which has the added benefit of putting me on your site.
Not many do that. 'If you want to read this in HTML format, click this link.' That works and I may very well click it.
Edit:
Never mind. I see they speak of unstyled HTML email, not plain text email. So, the email is still HTML, it's just not pretty. Chances are, I won't notice as I read in plain text most of the time.
> We need to know why people open plain email more than those fancy designed ones, rather than just having those numbers
This is interesting. Would you have questioned the numbers if they showed the inverse (ie designed emails have higher click rates)?
> a well-designed email could increase the efficiency of email reading as you may already familiar with some email and their layouts
I don't think this is true at all. IMO test emails are /much/ more easy to read, because I can use a consistent font and layout for /all/ my emails instead of reading through every designers view.
> emails which heavily polluted with contents that have nothing to do with me
Yes text or designed emails don't change any of the contents and spam still is spam. Marking as spam and removing is probably the best option :)
> This is interesting. Would you have questioned the numbers if they showed the inverse (ie designed emails have higher click rates)?
I think there are already answers to that, as we actually gradually came from that age where email were just plain text, to today's we have option to send HTML in emails.
> I don't think this is true at all. IMO test emails are /much/ more easy to read, because I can use a consistent font and layout for /all/ my emails instead of reading through every designers view.
Well, I think somebody should do a survey for that, about consistent font and layout, easy reading and also fatigue (It apply to driving[0], maybe it also apply to text reading).
And, I don't think plain-text email will be easy to read by natural. Yes, they can be made easy to read, but it doesn't mean they ARE easy to read.
A designed email can be made hard to read, and we call that poorly designed. On the other hand, they can be well-designed and easier to read than plain-text emails.
Boil down, the design of email (whether plain-text or HTML) must serve a purpose. The designer must know what they're doing and hold that purpose in their mind. Plain-text or HTML is a choice they need to made to better fulfill that purpose.
Simply saying one of them is better than the other is inaccurate.
I think this result needs more investigation. We need to know why people open plain email more than those fancy designed ones, rather than just having those numbers.
Designed email, for a lot of companies, is a matter of style, a VI (Visual Identity) for the receiver to remember. It's a good tool to differentiate your services from others.
Also, a well-designed email could increase the efficiency of email reading as you may already familiar with some email and their layouts, so you can guess it's content even you didn't actually read any word in it (Those "What's new" email from Twitter and Facebook for example).
If everybody start to send plain email today, then there will be a whole lot more of reading for the receivers to do.
So for me, I don't reject designed emails, as long as most content in the mail is what I needed. Maybe it's a notification, verification or something like that.
I hate some company send emails which heavily polluted with contents that have nothing to do with me, and if that email was also designed, I hate it even more.