E-mail Newsletters -- Your Take
March 24, 2004 | 
34 Comments
The topic of E-mail Newsletters and how best to go about them is a common and contentious one. There are many questions one can ask when looking into an e-mail newsletter strategy.
One of the most common, and most contentious, at least in my experience, is whether or not to go with HTML for your e-mail newsletter.
There are many ways to look at this, as well as many pros and cons for either side. For myself, I prefer plain text, both as a user and as a designer. I find that HTML has a tendency to display incorrectly for me, and at times actually renders the e-mail useless. There are other reasons I prefer plain text, but I don’t want to color your opinion too much…yet.
So, what is your take on e-mail newsletters? Do you prefer HTML or text? What has been your experience with them and what have you found works well from the user’s end as well as the developer’s end? What about e-mail newsletters in general? Do you find them useful? Do you subscribe to them? Do you read them?!?
Filed under: Web General
Comments
1. Todd said:
Wow…timely post here. My boss just asked me to start thinking about developing an e-mail newsletter.
I’m with you, I prefer the text only as a user but I’ve never had to make one before. I guess I would have to do that to have a real opinion on them. I’m interested in what others have to say about the pros and cons.
Posted on March 24, 2004 12:23 PM | #
2. Mike P said:
Text is by far more simple and easy to do. As a user I’m divided: text e-mails can be a bit hard to read, while good html e-mails, Sitepoint and the Economist come to mind, seem to always be rock-solid.
I’ve only done e-mail newsletters once before, a weekly that went out to about 2000 subscribers. It was a simple html format, and we didn’t even offer a text version; I do recall getting the odd complaint, however we’re talking maybe 2 over a six month period…
Posted on March 24, 2004 12:37 PM | #
3. JP said:
My organization, a non-profit, has gone both ways. We used HTML-only emails (so flashy, so modern) for a while before switching to straight-text. At least on our homespun system, the HTML newsletters were too error-prone, and the time spent on developing layouts for each edition was not worth it in terms of conversion (in the form of new donations or signups). Text-only is reliable and quick.
In all truth, I would like to offer both text-only and HTML newsletters to our supporters and let the user decide, but until I find a great, cheap (free) off-the-shelf product or script, I doubt I’ll have time to develop this option.
Regarding the need for and usefulness of email newsletters in general, they’re ubiquity makes them necessary even if they don’t pay off in business terms–users simply expect to be able to sign up, and they’re disappointed if they can’t. (And yes, we’re revamping the signup form on our site.)
The biggest hurdle in pulling off a regular email newsletter mailing hasn’t involved the technology at use; it’s just hard to pull together exciting, compelling content every month.
Posted on March 24, 2004 12:38 PM | #
4. Ruben said:
I develop newsletters for clients, and I always advise them to send two versions (and let the subscriber decide on which one to receive). It’s mainly a difference between a nice layout with a company touch versus clean text readable by any e-mail client.
Personally I hardly subscribe to newsletters, there are two or three I get in my mailbox regularly. Only one of these is text-only, simply because it doesn’t appear in HTML format.
Posted on March 24, 2004 12:46 PM | #
5. Ste said:
There are a lot of reasons to go with plain text, and they actually mirror the typical reasons for web standards development:
1. Less bandwidth
2. Guaranteed to work across email platforms (not all readers like HTML, very few read it correctly)
3. More accessible
Really, aside from the marketing aspect of making things look pretty, I can’t think of any valid reason to go with HTML email over plain text.
Posted on March 24, 2004 12:48 PM | #
6. Chris Vincent said:
Definitely text. I’ve never seen much of a purpose of HTML in email. They just weren’t made for each other.
As far as newsletters go, it’s surprising RSS hasn’t been adapted for them yet. I could imagine this as a possibility. The only problem is that if a newsletter is a once a month deal, it makes more sense to use a push system rather than a pull.
This probably doesn’t need to be mentioned, but newsletters need a very obvious cancellation method. I’ve signed up for many, and it seems that I have to cancel a dozen times before the mails stop coming. That’s just not good business.
Posted on March 24, 2004 12:52 PM | #
7. Ste Grainer said:
I should add that, increasingly, email clients (Mozilla Mail and Apple Mail come to mind) are adding options to turn off images and scripting in mail. As a user myself, I have both turned off whenever possible to increase the speed I can view my mail as well as decrease potential problems/annoyances with spam and viruses.
Posted on March 24, 2004 12:53 PM | #
8. waylman said:
I get a few email newsletters. Generally, I request the text version if i’m given a choice. However, for some I preffer the html version simply because the text version is to hard to follow (it to hard to find the content among the ads). I get the impression that the text version was just an afterthough. As if those who want just plain text don’t care what it looks like.
I would say we care more, and that is why we generally preffer simple, easy to follow plain text to poorly supported html.
********************************************
SOME FORMATTING TIPS:
1. Use all caps for headings
2. Use * or - or # etc. to separate sections
3. Make sure all line breaks are manual, even
for wrapped text.
4. Label all adds as such.
5. Be sure to include whitespace between
sections.
********************************************
SUMMARY:
follow those simple tips and I should
generally be happy.
Posted on March 24, 2004 12:54 PM | #
9. Nick said:
Personally I prefer plain text. I can’t stand HTML emails for various reasons. One of the more noticable reasons is that they never render properly in all email clients, so unless your targeting Outlook only readers, I suggest you have a contingency plan in place for those whos email clients wont display the graphic or perhaps even display the email as HTML source. Another reason why I hate HTML email is because they are often generated by a third party to make their client look good but fail miserable… for example, they embed tracking URLs but provide no privacy policy before clicking.. what data will they pull from me once I click on one of those links? Do I want them to associate my email address and name with the service that this link points to? Will they now bombard me with emails now that they know I was somewhat interested in their product or service? The other factor here is design… most HTML email and newsletters are designed to catch you attention but are often horrible to actually read. The leading is never properly set, the fonts are either too small or too lage. In short, I think HTML email was a bad idea from the beginning.
Posted on March 24, 2004 12:54 PM | #
10. Walter said:
I also prefer plain text, but most of the advanced email marketing tools need them to be in html in order to get useful information about how the newsletter is working.
I really dont know whats better, sending plain text messages without getting info about your campaigns results, or sending heavy html messages and getting all that information.
What do you think is better?
Posted on March 24, 2004 12:55 PM | #
11. Gabe said:
I agree with the majority that HTML in email just plain sucks. I suppose if I subscribed to any HTML newsletters I might feel differently, but for the most part I just associate it with spam.
Put a plain text teaser, and if I’m interested I’ll just go view it in a browser.
Of course, if your email newsletter is a major marketing tool meant to drive sales, then the issue gets stickier. I would need some more quantitative analysis before decidicing, but in general I would stay away from projects where email is at the core of the marketing plan.
Posted on March 24, 2004 01:22 PM | #
12. Daryl said:
Another issue to keep in mind is defanging. My mail server at work rewrites javascript and HTML tags, for example, so that any emails that attempt to use them become garbled. We had one email going out that included a couple of images; the images come across as ugly broken image graphics on defanged systems. I got around this by embedding a style sheet and specifying images as background images in divs and using style sheets to do all formatting within the document. Using this method, you don’t get broken images in your emails if the message is defanged, and the message will render pretty cleanly (no tables, for example) even if the HTML is displayed to the end user. Of course it’s still advisable, if you’re compelled to use HTML email, to offer a plain text option as well. Another little trick, for those given instructions to use HTML email, is to include an HTML comment at the very top that displays a plain-text version of the content, which will be viewable sans tags to those users who have HTML turned off.
Posted on March 24, 2004 01:22 PM | #
13. DarkBlue said:
I prefer plain text.
I have put together several mailing list for clients: only once were we asked to do a HTML mail version. That client eventually dropped the HTML version because it was tricky to maintain (even though template based) and the number of subscribers was minute compared to the text version.
I only receive one HTML list mail - Wired News. They seem to have got it right, always works, looks good and, imo, adds value. But if I were to subscribe again I’d choose the ASCII version (I use my iPAQ a lot for email - so ASCII is definitely my preferred format).
Posted on March 24, 2004 01:28 PM | #
14. Mike P said:
Here’s a question:
What is the end user’s perception of a text based e-mail versus an html e-mail?
I’m wondering what the bias is here, what with all of us being design folk…
Posted on March 24, 2004 02:03 PM | #
15. Keith said:
I’ve got some limited exposure to how an end user views e-mail newsletters (aside from my own experience) and what I’ve seen is they either don’t know the difference or don’t care.
Having said that, HTML e-mail often loses it’s formatting and to the end user just looks like a screwed up email. I’ve even seen a few that simply don’t render at all.
Posted on March 24, 2004 03:10 PM | #
16. alana said:
I would definitely say plain text. Most junk mail also comes in html format, and it’s one of the things that make me frustrated about an email. Email is all about speed and ease of communication, whereas most newsletters I dislike are bulky, take too long, and probably weren’t designed with the idea of displaying in my mailbox.
If you want me to look at html, point me to a web page, don’t email it to me.
There are exceptions… I worked in a company where everyone HAD to use Outlook for email, that means uniform display for everyone, then it makes sense. Didn’t mean I didn’t like it. More likely than not they were still poorly designed, and they had overly loud sound accompaniment to boot. Yuck.
On the other hand, if you can give me the information I want, and the link information I want quickly and simply in a well laid-out plain text format, I am super happy.
Posted on March 24, 2004 03:29 PM | #
17. Elaine said:
I’d say plain text, for all the reasons mentioned – waylman also makes some good points on what makes a properly formatted text email newsletter.
the thing that *hasn’t* been mentioned that bugs me all to hell about html email is not being able to see the URL of the links…because if I click it has this tendency to open in whatever browser window/tab is active at the time. and dammit, that disrupts my normal flow.
in outlook (work) a URL will turn into a link, but I don’t *have to* click on it to go there; I can copy and paste, and not lose where I am in my normal browsing.
Posted on March 24, 2004 04:31 PM | #
18. Eric TF Bat said:
<p>Foo</p> is bigger than plain Foo, and the difference comes out at two or three times in an average HTML mail that I’ve seen. That means I have to “pay” more for HTML mail, in terms of download time, bandwidth or sheer irritation, depending on whether my mail has been “defanged” (thanks for that term, Daryl). My principle is simple, and expressed implicitly or explicitly to anyone who offers me HTML mail: I don’t love you enough to put up with that rubbish. Email is for plain text; if you can’t handle that, go away.
Mind you, I feel the same about poor punctuation and spelling…
Posted on March 24, 2004 05:11 PM | #
19. Jennifer Grucza said:
I think it’s clear that if you’re going to publish a newsletter in HTML, you should also publish an alternate text-only version.
That said, I sometimes prefer the HTML version over the text, depending on the newsletter. Plain text can be hard to scan. You have to read it more closely to figure out what’s important to you. But that’s preferable to a ugly or broken HTML version.
I used to hate getting HTML in my email since my mail reader couldn’t handle it. Now I read most of my mail on the web anyway, so it’s quite natural to see HTML in my mail messages.
Personally, though so much spam is HTML, I don’t associate HTML with spam. Rather, I associate big blocks of garish colors and bad grammar and spelling with spam. :)
Posted on March 24, 2004 05:16 PM | #
20. Tim said:
Jakob Nielsen did a report on this a little while ago as well.
here is the link http://useit.com/alertbox/20040217.html
One point I remember from the article was that if people got sick of the html email they would block the sender rather than try and find a unsubscribe link.
how do people send graphic emails? at my work we use outlook and it does a great job of screwing it up (when people forward it, outlook removes background images referenced on external servers).
Posted on March 24, 2004 09:17 PM | #
21. Dave Meehan said:
This debate ought to consider what the sender is trying to acheive, and what constitutes a HTML email. In my experience you get two types of email newsletter, those that are strictly plain text, and those that are highly stylised via HTML, but no middle ground. Just like every browser has problems with advanced HTML formatting (either tables or CSS), every mail client has a tougher job with that process. If you need to ALL CAPS titles and put *#*#*#* weird symbols into plain text messages to make the content more legible, why not go for simple HTML formatting, using HR and STRONG for example. Most mail clients will cope with that and you’ll deliver the message you intended.
Which brings us to why you do it. Its a public relations excerise, right? So you want to convey some information to your customer/subscriber/whatever. You want to remind them that you are still there, still offering something that might entice or excite them. If you are commercial, you almost certainly want to enforce your brand with the reader, and that inclines you to flashy, well presented content to hook the reader. Plain text can just be too hard to access if you send too much information. So why not just send a link in a short message? Hello, this is XYZ Corp and you requested that we should keep you informed when we have new information/news/content etc. Please go to xxxx to catch up with us.
You then use a page on your site (shock horror) to present the newsletter, with more detailed and in context links to the other content. It amazes me that people spend time on a throw away newsletter and then don’t use that on their site. If you say something interesting in the newsletter, isn’t that worth shouting about on your site. Also, having an archive of newsletters as part of the site means that new readers can review what you send and decide if its relevant to them. For example, many companies say “Do you want to receive information about our company and products via email”. I’m inclined to sign up because they might tell me when something important is broke, fixed, cheaper or whatever (that matters to me). What I invariably get though is bumph with minimal value about other aspects of their business that is not of interest to me (but of interested to them in trying to extract more money from me).
Newsletters are rarely written to inform and educate the reader, and that is often their biggest failing, and makes the text/html debate pretty redundant.
Posted on March 25, 2004 12:38 AM | #
22. chrisp said:
For emails I always prefer plain text - HTML emails always get a cursory look, but if nothing immediately grabs my attention it is trashed.
If an email needs to get across a message which only graphics will fulfil why not send plain text and include a link to a richer online version - PDF, HTML or whatever, depending on requirements. That way everyone gets the choice.
Posted on March 25, 2004 01:07 AM | #
23. Sam said:
Personally, I’m a fan of HTML e-mails, but nothing too flashy.
Benefits:
* It’s good for branding. People seem to think that branding in newsletters in optional, without explaining why. Every oter corporate whatzit gets branded - to a large extent, it’s why designers get hired :P I mean, do we argue about “plain text vs HTML websites”? :P
* You can lay things out better
- for example a right-hand column for ads/secondary information
- smaller text for the disclaimer / unsubscribe link.
- link text instead of full links to improve readability
Rules
* Keep the code simple, minimum HTML support is widespread (>95%) but the level of support varies.
* Keep the code small.
* Ensure that there is a valid text version included using mime multipart.
* Keep images to an absolute minimum - eg, limit it to the logo. Your aim shouldn’t be to replicate the website on the
* Use inlined images; more and more people will block linked images (eg, Outlook 2003 blocks ‘em by default)
* Tracking images are going to become less and less useful and more and more annoying, as more e-mail clients are simply blocking external images. Save yourself the trouble and leave ‘em out. If tracking is important, store the bulk of article content on your website and just include abstract+link in the e-mail.
Posted on March 25, 2004 01:28 AM | #
24. Tim said:
I seem to be in a minority here, but I prefer HTML newsletters. But I’ve also got a little experience with this - I build 7 HTML newsletters every month. Each is targeted to a specific customer group and contains actual information they are interested in; including news stories and interest articles that we write.
The key to a good HTML newsletter, as some have pointed out, is to keep the code simple. I’ve tested our e-mails in as many e-mail clients as I can get my hands on and the results have been very good. By keeping to simple HTML markup I have found that most e-mail clients handle the newsletters just fine, or degrade in an exceptable manner.
For example, the online AOL e-mail client I have access to reads the HTML but doesn’t apply the embedded CSS. The result is still a perfectly readable and usable newsletter; however, it is in Times instead of Verdana and not all of the colors come through. Since neither of those things affect the usability of the newsletter, I’m fine with it.
I also make sure that there is a text version available, as well as a link to a copy on our Web site for those that have HTML/images turned off or encounter other problems. (For example, Outlook for the Mac renders all HTMl e-mails as RTF, which produces a strange hybrid e-mail with nonfunctional links.)
To create text versions I use NoteTab lite, which has a handy function to convert HTML to plain text. Click the button, do a little clean up, and you’ve got a text copy.
The trouble with text vesions is the readability. Line breaks, for example, are a nightmare. Don’t include any and you generate a blob of text. Introduce them every 70 characters or so, and you generate a broken blob. I have found that no matter where I place line breaks, someone’s email client will still break them in different spots. But by including visual dividers and all cap headers to section the document, you can make the text vesion usuable. Oh, and it too has a URL for the online version.
My biggest problem is that while I’m trying to code with good XHTML/CSS for Web sites, I have to force myslelf to code “poorly” with HTML 3.x/4.0 for e-mails.
Posted on March 25, 2004 04:39 AM | #
25. Steve said:
I currently send out about 20-30 HTML emails a month to anywhere from 10-15,000 people at a time and I hate it.
What started out as a small project i developed to send some of the top stories from our website, www.cegltd.com, has turned into a monster that is borderline spam and is now totally out of my control.
This was my small, revenue generating, baby and i silently weep at what my company has turned it into.
Posted on March 25, 2004 07:02 AM | #
26. Michael said:
I enjoy HTML e-mails for the same reason I enjoy the design on this site: it’s purty and aids in the display and transfer of information.
But more to the point, I write a newsletter for an e-commerce company that goes out to about 400,000 subscribers every week, and we used to be text-only. We developed an HTML template that definitely increases production time, but not inordinately so. More importantly (from an e-commerce perspective), referred sales have more than doubled. When we switched over, subscribers were given the option of continuing text-only, and we got less than 2000 takers.
Posted on March 25, 2004 07:51 AM | #
27. Justin said:
Here’s an old article from ClickZ about this very topic:
HTML Versus Text: The Saga Continues
A more recent article: Plain Text Email Messages More Effective Than HTML for Marketing to AOL Subscribers
Like most web-related decisions, it’s just not clear-cut. I usually like HTML messages, as long as the designer doesn’t forget that it’s an email, not a webpage. Most non-techical people just don’t know there is such a thing as different types of email. They just know that some are plain, and some look pretty. Everything I’ve ever heard, is that HTML gets a better response, so multitype/alternative is the ideal way to go. At least you can’t go wrong with plain-text.
You might even want to consider asking users their preference regardless of how you send the message. Having that info may help you make an educated decision whether to go to the trouble of HTML.
Posted on March 25, 2004 11:25 AM | #
28. pete said:
I prefer plain text. That being said, I don’t mind too much if it’s a multipart/alternative email message that has an HTML portion and a plain text portion. Yes, it’s a bandwidth waster for people who prefer just the plain text, but in some cases you just don’t get a choice.
Posted on March 25, 2004 11:55 AM | #
29. Mark Fusco said:
I develop a email newsletter for a number of groups - including a home realtor - who have messages that would be lost without some graphical elements. However, realizing not everyone wants to (or can) accept HTML-based email, I send out a text version of the message as well.
Posted on March 25, 2004 01:00 PM | #
30. beerzie boy said:
Signed up for, good; unsolicited, bad.
Posted on March 25, 2004 03:36 PM | #
31. Keith said:
This is a great discussion and very relevant to my job. We do a lot of email blasts and newsletters for our clients (please no flames…they are all opt-in). I agree that plain text is better from a usability standpoint. Developing these html based emails so that they are consistent and function well across the kazillions of email clients out there is a real pain in the arse. But marketing execs and account managers like to see flashy, “high impact” stuff. For that matter, I think the average end user (read as “non-geeks”) likes that kind of stuff as well.
I mean yeah I enjoy compelling visuals but it seems to me that since these are all opt-in campaigns, the subscribers are already interested in the products and services of our clients. It is not too far of a leap to conclude that what they are really interested in is the content.
Since most of our newsletters have mini-sites associated with them, I think it would be reasonable to go with text based emails that contain the url of the mini-site. But alas this is changing too. Now our clients seem to want to get away form the mini-site and go with one long scrolling page of content with anchor links. Talk about bandwith issues. Its all very new to me so I still have a lot of questions about the whole model.
I think the biggest challenge is definitely convincing marketing execs with 20+ years of experience that a flashy email may not be necessary for customers who have already explicity expressed their interest in their products and services. But I can already hear the reply…”Well sure they already signed up for the newsletter…but how do we keep them coming back?”
The bottom line is that this issue won’t be decided by developers, but by numbers. What approach drives the most revenue to our clients. So I will end this with yet another question. As email clients continue to provide more functionality, will this be a moot point?
Posted on March 25, 2004 08:45 PM | #
32. Niket said:
I am more likely to read a plain-text email newsletter than an HTML newsletter. If you can convey all that you need to in 4 lines, rest assured your email WILL be read; even if it is for Nigerian money transfer.
When I was volunteering with an NPO, I sent out HTML newsletters due to branding issues to our patron base and plain-text newsletters to our volunteer base.
Posted on March 26, 2004 11:32 AM | #
33. JC said:
Plain text. Maybe rich text. But no tables or images or excess formatting. Bold, italics, maybe an accent color, those I don’t mind if they’re used for headings or whatever. Bullet points if it’s really needed. But plain text is much prefered overall.
Posted on March 31, 2004 07:58 AM | #
34. Raghu said:
Can any one help in designing the HTML newsletter ?
Posted on November 18, 2004 05:06 AM | #
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