Drive Email Engagement, Drive Results

Ensuring the effectiveness of your email messaging is paramount to short and long-term success. In the first of a five part series highlighting email marketing campaign best practices, we focus our attention on HTML initiatives with some tips and guidelines designed to maximize deliverability and functionality:

Best Practices for HTML Campaigns

1 - Use Basic HTML

2 - Do not use rich-media functions such as video, inline audio or Flash

3 - Do not use JavaScript or HTML layers

4 - Simplify the coding process - If using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), choose the inline embed within the two body tags and not within the header

5 - Avoid background images

6 - Create HTML using a maximum pixel width of 600 - no horizontal scrolling is required - HTML width should be tested for look and feel for as many email clients (AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail) as possible

7 - Keep files to a reasonable size - In the teens for images, emails under 50KB

8 - Design your email with the Outlook preview pane in mind - Make sure the top portion of the email carries your key message

9 - Design your email to read top to bottom and left to right

10 - Avoid 1x1 pixel spacer gifs – These may flag your email as spam

11 - Link to a web version of your email message - This benefits recipients whose email clients fail to properly render your email. Add a link to the top of your TEXT version to maximize visibility

12 - Use image alt tags and action-oriented text - For example: Click here for 25% off; Sample alt tag: <img SRC="link.ixs1.net/site/5459/images/imagename.gif" alt="Click here for 25% off" BORDER=0>

13 - Provide subscriber management – Make it easy for subscribers to change email addresses, update subscriptions, unsubscribe or contact your company right from their email

14 - Do not use forms – Will eliminate messaging errors and functionality issues

15 - Avoid making your message one big image - Incorporate some HTML text into the message so readers can clearly see what you have to offer

For more information on these and additional email messaging best practices and how they can help you drive results, please contact a MediaWhiz Account Representative.