Truth #1: Plain
text works better than HTML
Each time you send an email campaign to your
subscribers, readers or customers, you have to
make an important decision: plain text or HTML?
If you
choose plain text, you’ll send your email
in a text-only format, but if you choose HTML,
you can enhance the message with colors, graphics,
and layout elements such as tables. Plus, you
can include your company logo and even your own
photograph, if you wish.
Faced with this choice, most email marketers
are presently choosing HTML as the preferred
content type. Why? Because they believe they
can make the email look more compelling and,
therefore, more people will read it and respond
to it.
but
they're wrong...
This
assumption, it turns out, may be incorrect. HTML
emails get deleted more frequently and
more quickly than plain text emails. Across the
Internet, more readers actually prefer plain text
emails.
Why?
The reason is simple: HTML emails are perceived
as being too commercial. Most email recipients
are fed up with commercial email, especially the
unsolicited variety (spam), and they tend to associate
any HTML email with a pushy, sales-like
pitch.
Plain
text emails, on the other hand, are seen as being
content rich. If there’s something
really important to be said, the important parts
are likely to be found in the text, not in some
logo or ad banner. People intuitively know that,
and as strange as it may seem, plain text emails
actually carry more credibility these days than
HTML emails (that’s a complete flip from
three years ago, by the way).
The
research proves it...
A marketing firm called Lucid Marketing conducted
tests with AOL users to determine what worked
best: HTML or plain text. The results were staggering:
plain text emails consistently generated higher
click rates, sometimes 100% higher!
Consider this: plain text emails simply
load faster. And since so many AOL users are still
on dial up lines, it makes sense that fast-loading
emails will be more successful.
There's
a lot of bad HTML out there
When you're deciding between HTML and plain
text, keep in mind that the vast majority of
HTML email is very poorly constructed. Or, to
put it bluntly, most HTML email designs stink!
Gaudy colors, flashing animated graphics, gigantic
fonts... you get the picture.
On the bright side, a well-constructed HTML
email can do quite well, but only if the design
is top notch and stands well above the crowd.
HTML
is likely to get flagged as spam
The
big news on email marketing these days isn’t
the subject line, the landing pages, or the offer:
it’s the ability to actually get your email
delivered to the big ISPs like America Online
(AOL), Yahoo! and MSN. If your message gets flagged
as possible spam by these providers, you’ll
flush your campaign results right down the toilet.
And
one of the quickest ways to get your email flagged
as spam is to make it look like spam by filling
it up with graphics and large fonts!
But plain text emails, especially
when they don’t contain spam-like words
and phrases, tend to sail through filters far
more easily.
What’s the point of having a great looking
HTML email message if half your subscribers never
see it? Stick to plain text email and your results
will likely improve.
Half
of all users are still on dial up
I know
that broadband is popular, and I personally couldn’t
imagine getting anything done over a dial up account,
but about half the users on the Internet are still
using dial up (56K, usually)! That means your
HTML emails are going to be a royal pain for those
users to read. Plain text emails, on the other
hand, load in an instant.
Microsoft
Outlook 2003 doesn't load HTMLs automatically
To make
matters worse for HTML emails, the new versions
of Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express, the
most popular email clients on the PC, don’t
automatically load HTML graphics. This means your
carefully-constructed HTML email will look downright
ugly on your recipient’s preview screen.
They won’t get the full graphics unless
they double-click the email and open it. That’s
a totally different operation from email client
software of the past, which automatically loaded
graphics as part of the email preview.
Everybody
can read plain text
The
fact is, every email client on the planet, no
matter what the operating system, can read plain
text emails. Whether your subscribers are using
Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo!, Outlook, or even Linux or
Netscape Email, they can read your plain text
messages just fine.
I use
plain text email frequently. Not because it’s
fancy and eye-catching, but because it works.
Will
plain text work for you?
The
fact that most Internet users prefer plain text
doesn’t necessarily mean that your subscribers
prefer it. I suggest you survey them first. Ask
what they prefer. And then test plain text messages
yourself and see what results you get. Or, you
could resort to a split list format by asking
subscribers to indicate which format they prefer.
Let
me know what you
find. Send
me your comments
or
results and I’ll add them to this series in the
future for others to read.
NEXT: HOW TO PREVENT YOUR IN-HOUSE EMAIL
LIST FROM VANISHING
In the next part, I reveal
the rarely-recognized truth about how most in-house
email lists are rapidly disappearing, and what
you can do to prevent it. If your email list isn’t
as large as you’d like it to be, or you’re
getting more bounces than you want, you’ll
definitely want to turn to the next Truth!
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