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. http://adhomebase.com/bizbytes.htm
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