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Pretty E-mails for All! |
E-mail is awesome. It gives us the ability to connect with our constituents on a personal level, through an efficient means. And, these days we have the ability to build beautiful, eye-catching, awesome-looking e-mails.
In e-mail design, a couple of things should go hand-in hand. You want to create something that is both visually appealing and accessible across e-mail hosts.
There are a plethora of available e-mail tools and hosts such as Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook, AOL, Yahoo, Thunderbird, and the list goes on…. With so many e-mail tools available it is important to keep in mind how your particular e-mail design will function and appear in those various e-mail tools when your audience views them. After all, you do want all of your audience to enjoy their reading experience. It seems I've had a lot of recent inquiries about e-mail design best practices. So, I have compiled some of the handy tips I’ve come across. Here goes:
- Use HTML tables to control the layout of your e-mail, instead of depending solely on CSS positioning.
- Some common table layout elements include: 1.) A header containing a logo and navigation links – used to reinforce branding and important links such as “Visit Us Online”, “Tell A Friend” and “Donate”; 2.) A body containing copy and links to stories, donation forms, events, and the like, that are on your website; 3.) A footer at the bottom - containing contact information, an unsubscribe link and links identical to the top navigation.
- When using CSS, use inline styles to control elements such as colors and fonts.
- Watch the width of your e-mail. It is recommended to stay in the 600 pixel width range when designing the banner, or masthead, to be used in the e-mail.
- Pay attention to the plain text version of your e-mail. Don’t disregard how it is organized or looks. Remember those in your audience who receive plain text and make sure they will enjoy reading their “plain” version, too.
- Testing, 1, 2, 3, testing…Test your e-mail in several e-mail tools on various browsers, such as Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox, and so on
At the end of the day, what is important is that your e-mails are clean, professional looking, neatly organized and awesome across various e-mail tools.
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Check out the Emogrifier, an open source PHP utility that converts HTML & CSS into gmail friendly emails. You can also use the web-based version to create HTML emails with inline CSS for sending. http://www.emogrifier.com