8 reasons why HTML emails
will hurt your marketing
efforts
By: Valerie Tay
HTML emails have been around
for a while. They look more
professional than their
text-only counterparts and
actually generate better
click-through rates. For
example, there are studies
which show that
click-through
rate for text emails for
some industries is 7.1%
while that
for HTML emails is 10%.
That being said, many
marketers are still not keen
to
publish in html. The reason:
there are many problems
associated with HTML emails
that can actually hurt,
rather than aid your
marketing campaign. So let’s
make
a list of how HTML can be
hurtful to your marketing
efforts.
1.Different email clients
work differently
Internet Explorer (IE) is
the dominant Web browsers
used by
most web surfers, so when it
comes to designing websites,
as long as the site presents
well in IE, chances are,
most
visitors to your site can
view it properly.
Unfortunately, the equation
becomes more complicated if
we
are talking about emails
since there are different
types
of email clients (eg.,
Outlook Express, Eudora,
web-based
email clients and so on),
each with different
capabilities,
settings, versions, etc.
that make it more difficult
to
predict how your email will
look like at the recipients’
end. Generally speaking, the
capabilities of web-based
email clients such as
Hotmail, AOL and Yahoo! Mail
are not
as robust as program-based
email clients, so certain
effects that appear all
right in program-based
clients may
not show properly in
web-based clients. Another
example
is how some web-based
clients cause your
re-directs on URL
to break or appear as plain
text making it such that
links
that are crucial to making
the sales do not work. The
worst blunder happens when
your recipient receives a
marketing message that they
can’t read at all. This is
the case with some email
clients such as Pine that
don’t
have the capability to read
HTML or AOL that can’t
display HTML properly.
Consider also the problem
your
recipients will encounter if
they use PDA and
Internet-capable cellular
phone. These devices don’t
support HTML email at all.
2.The problem with printing
HTML emails
Some of your recipients like
to print their emails and
read
them offline for a variety
of reasons. The danger of
this
to your marketing message is
that graphical components in
your HTML email may appear
as blank boxes with icons
indicating that graphics
should be there, but are
unfortunately not there.
When such blank boxes
appear, you
are kissing goodbye to the
hope that your graphical
HTML
email will present a
professional image to your
recipients. Instead of
looking disjointed and
untidy with
blank boxes, your message
will have a greater impact
if it
has no frills (i.e., plain
text), but is presented in a
properly formatted way.
3.Connecting your users to
the Internet when they
don’t intend that
Sometimes, the action of
opening a HTML email will
trigger
a connection to the Internet
when your user doesn’t have
the intention to be
connected. This results in
inconvenience to your users
because they then have to
disconnect from the
Internet.
4.HTML emails load slower
Internet users are an
impatient bunch. At the very
least,
HTML email is twice the size
of its text-based
equivalent.
This means if you send your
ezine in HTML, you tie up
more of your readers’
bandwidth during delivery
and
receiving. Some of your
ezine’s readers use dial-up.
This delay is much more
noticeable to them than to
your
broadband-user readers.
5.Security problems with
HTML emails
You want to send your
recipients your marketing
message,
not a virus. The unfortunate
reality is that HTML emails
transmit viruses easier than
text-based emails. This is
because it is possible for
attachments to automatically
execute code without the
user opening the attachment.
6.HTML emails are harder to
forward
Almost every marketer hopes
for her campaign to be
“viral”
(that is, your marketing
message being passed on from
one
recipient to another and
another). It’s
straightforward
to forward a text-based
email from one recipient to
her
friends and family. But when
one tries to forward a HTML
email to another,
incompatibility problems
arise. The
forwarded email may not be
received by its recipients
looking the same way as it
looked when it was first
received by the original
recipient.
7.More variables to measure
makes it more
difficult to gauge your
success
The success of a text-based
email marketing message is
easier
to measure than a HTML one
simply because there are
more
variables involved in the
success of the latter. For
example, your email may have
a poor response not because
the message was badly
worded, but because the font
you had
chosen is tiring for the
eyes. Is your font even
readable
by every computer? What
about the visibility of your
typeface against the
coloured background you have
chosen?
The point is: there are so
many variables in a HTML
email
marketing campaign that it’s
difficult for you to measure
what went right or what went
wrong in a particular
campaign.
8.Do you want to maintain
three lists?
Due to the uncertainty of
how your HTML email will
look at
each recipient’s computer,
businesses that choose to go
HTML also have to maintain a
text and an AOL version of
their ezines. This means,
you have to maintain three
lists, rather than one. If
you are a large corporation
with a database-driven
mailer that have a
“sniffer”, you
can rely on your “sniffer”
to tell which recipient is
able
to receive which type of
email and then send only
that
version. But if you don’t
have that capability,
maintaining three lists can
be too challenging for your
home-based business.
In conclusion, if you don’t
know for sure whether the
majority of your readers
will be able to receive HTML
emails, send them text
messages. If you really love
the
idea of having a HTML
newsletter, there’s always
the
alternative of putting your
newsletter up on your
website
and providing a link at the
beginning of your text-based
email which says, “Click
here if you wish to view
this
message in HTML”.
About the Author
Valerie Tay is the editor
of BizBytes Newsletter.
Written in an easy-reading
style, this ezine is packed
with practical and powerful
tips on building, growing
and marketing your business.
New subscribers receive a
FREE bonus eCourse.
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