Guidelines for HTML and text Email Campaign Messages

The quality, formating, and content of an email message is an integral part of an effective email marketing campaign that has the ability to generate interest in your products and services, cultivate existing prospects and  keep your subscribe list informed. This, along with the other channels of Web Marketing and Website design and production work together to form an effective web strategy for your organization.

Context

For a long time, email was the favourite and most efficient way for marketers to dessiminate their message. This popularity resulted in the nuisance of SPAM and the many software filters and applications that have been written to block the unwanted email. This document will outline the best and safest way to create an email message that will not fall prey to the first SPAM email filter.

To be able to reach all your prospects, it's recommended that you send a hybrid message that contains both an HTML and ASCII test message.

HTML Message

The common email readers vary in standards compliance; therefore the compatibility of web browsers to HTML 3, 4.x or XHTML is not representative how how email clients interpret HTML messages. Because of this, the lowest possible standard will be used. HTML 3.0 as it was created for Netscape 4.x is a good basis to go by.

1. Do not use CSS (either inline of in an external file *1)
2. Do not embed any external objects *1 such as CSS rel links, script files etc except JPEG or GIF images
3. Use the very basic HTML taks and attributes to define your content layout. Usr a table, font tags and image taks to accomplish your layout objectives
4. Use ALT attibutes for images ad well as TITLE attributes for HREF tags, these will make it easy/possible for people to understand the message even if the images do not display
5. Make the images as small as possible (file size) without overly compromising quality