E-Mail Marketing Style Guide
From: Jules Stevens
Cyberwave Media
Dear Friend,
Now more than ever, our subscribers are using e-mail to follow up with prospects, stay in touch with clients, and generate new business. After all, it's one of the most effective ways to market because it's fast, direct, and inexpensive.
We review dozens of ad campaigns every week, and have noticed a distinct lack of standards with regard to layout, formatting, and style. Some of the messages we see look downright ugly!
Unfortunately, this means confusing offers, unreadable communications, and low response rates. Even worse, you appear unprofessional to your customers and prospects, which costs you credibility, potentially destroying the relationships you work hard to build.
If you use e-mail in your business, and you want to make sure all your messages look good, you'll want to follow our easy-to-use e-mail style guide. Discover the techniques professional e-mail marketers use to make their commercial messages and perform well.
These guidelines apply to all e-mail pieces, including lead-generating ads, follow-ups, autoresponder documents, etc. A perfectly formatted piece reads easily, and the only thing your prospects have to concern themselves with is the message itself.
General Email Specifications:
The following applies to all e-mail:
- Remember e-mail is read on the screen, not a printed page. Avoid using large blocks of text. Set paragraphs no more than 5 lines long. By keeping the paragraphs brief, you create more white space in the message, which breaks up the page and makes it easier to read.
- Use bullets. Bullets not only excite a reader with promised benefits, but they are another way to break up the page, creating white space. By isolating them, you increase the likelihood they will be read.
- Keep the total message size under 24k to avoid being blocked. Some services set 24k as their maximum byte size before the spam filters kick in. Additionally, short messages are faster to send, and recipients appreciate mail that downloads quickly.
- Never send e-mail with attachments to prospects or clients. Many people don't understand them or believe they are viruses. Some can't even find them on their hard drive. An alternative is to send a link in your e-mail to a page with the information, image or document you want them to see.
- The message body should never contain non-html code like Java, JavaScript, or CGI.
- Messages should be cross-platform and tested for readability on both Netscape and Explorer on both PCs and Macs. Use standard html 3.0 mail-to tags and links to Web sites, and avoid additional encoding.
- All messages should be designed for a 640x480 pixel display resolution.
- When referencing URLs, always use the entire Web address, including the http://, so people can click without cutting and pasting: http://www.your-link.com
- Avoid long URLs as they can truncate and may not work for certain users. Best to create a short tracking link that redirects visitors to the desired page.
- When mailing to AOL users, include standard HTML links so people can click without cutting and pasting:
<a href="http://www.your-link.com">Your text here.</a>
- Test everything before you actually mail to customers or prospects. Always send a copy of the message to yourself first. Make sure to re-check all links, which can get changed by Web editors like FrontPage.
Text ad formatting
Generally, the best way to send an e-mail message is using straight text. While the look isn't as pretty as html, it's a far more reliable way to communicate for the following reasons:
- Certain spam filtering systems block graphical and HTML mail, and a percentage of your messages simply won't get through. While HTML mail generally has a higher click through rate, this is often mitigated by the fact that not all your e-mail is delivered.
- HTML mail is almost always used for commercial messages. If you want to avoid having your e-mail look like spam, send it as text. If you have a highly graphical message that incorporates Web like attributes (Java, Flash, DHTML, etc.), it's best to put it on the Web and use a short text e-mail to provide the link to it.
- Text messages are smaller and open easier.
- There are still people using e-mail software who can't (or won't) read html messages.
Below are our guidelines for creating and sending text-based e-mail:
- Create or open your message in a straight text editor like Notepad.
- Change the default font to Courier (a fixed-length font) to replicate the look used by a majority of email readers.
- Use the space key to count off 70 characters, which is the maximum number of characters per line we recommend for text e-mail.
- Use a hard return (the enter key) at the end of every line to format the email. Avoid centering, indenting, or using your TAB key. Keep text left hand justified, including subheads and bullets.
- Offset bullets with demarcation like an asterisk or the ">" key. Example:
** Guaranteed low rates!
- Save as a text file to cut and paste into your mail manager (Aweber.com, MailKing, GetResponse.com, etc).
Graphical e-mail formatting
Somewhere between text and html is graphical e-mail. The main venue for this is AOL users, who are generally precluded from receiving full HTML messages with GIFs and JPGs, but who can receive messages using custom fonts, colors, and embedded links.
You can also use graphical e-mail to non-AOL recipients as well if you want to avoid downloadable images and potentially broken graphics, but still have a more interesting message than straight text.
Here's how to do it ...
- Open your Web editor (FrontPage, HomeSite, DreamWeaver, etc.) and create a centered or left justified table.
- Set the table to a fixed length, somewhere between 500 and 600 pixels. Don't use percentages.
- Create your message. To include links, use standard "mailto:" and link protocols.
- Save as an HTML file to a directory you'll remember. (We have a separate sub-directory in "My Documents" for HTML messages).
- Cut and paste the HTML code into your mail manager (Aweber.com, MailKing, GetResponse.com, etc).
HTML ad formatting
To really dazzle your recipients, and take control of the look and feel of the e-mail, you'll want to use HTML. Unlike simple graphical e-mail, sending HTML messages is like sending a complete Web page.
Here's how to do it properly:
- Open your Web editor (FrontPage, HomeSite, DreamWeaver, etc.) and create a centered or left justified table.
- Set the table to a fixed length, somewhere between 500 and 600 pixels. Don't use percentages or format with style sheets.
- Create your message. To include links, use standard "mailto:" and link protocols.
- Don't use tiling background images. These tend to distort the copy on low-resolution computers.
- The maximum width of any single image should be 590 pixels, or 10 pixels less than the table size, whichever is smaller.
- Use only JPEG, GIF, and animated GIF images. E-mail readers have trouble with other formats.
- The maximum size of any single image should be 15K, and we recommend keeping them under 10K if possible.
- Keep the total size of all images under 30K, and the total size of your entire e-mail under 40K. Smaller is better, and remember anything over 24k has a higher risk of being blocked.
- Images should be referenced from an existing Web site, within an image directory. For example:
<IMG SRC="http://www.yoursite.com/images/imagename.gif">
- Follow acceptable Web design rules. Use white or very light colored backgrounds and dark fonts or dark backgrounds with light fonts.
- Save as an HTML file to a directory you'll remember. (We have a separate sub-directory in "My Documents" for HTML messages).
- Cut and paste the HTML code into your mail manager (Aweber.com, MailKing, GetResponse.com, etc).
Conclusion
If you follow these guidelines, you'll discover your e-mail is more responsive simply because you are making it easy to read. And that means happier customers and more money for you!
Respectfully submitted,
Jules Stevens
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