epost nyhetsbrev

Tekst versus HTML-baserte epost nyhetsbrev

Markedsførerne elsker HTML, men for mottagerne ligner HTML nyhetsbrev for mye på Spam. Da ICONCAST gikk over til HTML fikk de en strøm av avmeldinger. Nå har MarketPosition Monthly, med 470.000 abonnenter gjort det samme, uten en eneste avmelding. Her beskrives hvorfor, hvordan og hvorfor du ikke bør gjøre det samme. Artikkelen underbygger vår påstand om at innhold er viktigere enn grafikk og vår beslutning om å fortsette e-guidens nyhetsbrev med tekstbasert format en stund til.

Denne artikkelen er et nyhetsbrev fra EmailSherpa og gjengis i sin orginale form, i tråd med utgiverens retningslinjer. Nyhetsbrevet er tekstbasert.

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EmailSherpa Get Your Free Subscription:
http://www.emailsherpa.com -  Please forward *without* cutting! June 19, 2002
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Switching Your Newsletter From Text-Only to HTML:
Advice and Tactics From a Marketer Who Just Did It

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TACTICS: Switching from Text-only to HTML
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Making the decision to switch from text to HTML is a gut- wrenching one for many email newsletter publishers.

Marketers publishing newsletters to support sales love HTML because they can insert images such as their logo and product snapshots. Publishers in the ezine business who do newsletters longer than a page or two also like HTML because they can use bold and font sizes to make their issues easier to read.

However, although the public still tend to click through more on links in HTML newsletters, many dislike HTML intensely because of larger file sizes which clog their email box and slow downloads, and the fact that more and more, it looks like spam.

In fact just 18 months ago, when then-popular marketing newsletter ICONOCAST switched from text to HTML, publisher Michael Tchong admitted to MarketingSherpa, "People are flaming us." And he saw a small-but-painful wave of unsubscribes.

So, when MarketPosition Monthly, a newsletter published by FirstPlace Software to support sales of their WebPosition Gold product, went from text-only to HTML last week, we contacted President Brent Winters immediately.

Winters has been publishing the newsletter for nearly five years (see link to our Case Study on it from last October below) and has about 470,000 opt-in subscribers -- so he's a real expert in this area.

-> Why switch?

One of the reasons MarketPosition has been so popular is that unlike many newsletters intended to support sales, each issue contains the full-text of several articles that readers will find useful (versus a bunch of all-about-us or buy-now content, or just links to stories on other sites.)

This meant the average issue weighed in at 8-10 printed pages. Winters says, "Many people loved it, but they also found it overwhelming. Some said it was tedious to read it in a text- based format."

Still, he held off for almost five years due to concerns that not every mail client can read HTML (and as you'll know if you've seen past issues of EmailSherpa, there is no such thing as a "sniffer" to tell which can.) Finally Winters felt it was time.

-> Keeping the text-only option

One of the reasons ICONOCAST's switch to HTML drew so much reader rage was that there was no way for people who preferred text-only to switch back to it.

Winters was careful to avoid that trap by offering readers the option to switch to text-only. He added a note and hotlink to a Web page where they could switch at the very start of the first HTML issue, and plans to continue making it easy to change.

He also recognizes that not all email clients are alike, even now. So the HTML version was designed to work (and carefully tested on) with Eudora with Microsoft viewer, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook and Outlook Express.

-> Further design considerations

Because readers were so used to seeing the newsletter in its entirety without having to click on each story to read it online, "we decided to put the whole newsletter into the body of the message," Winters says.

"That's also why there's no graphics. We just decided to create an attractive product without using [them]. It also cuts the download time. Our newsletter already is large, with a lot of content. The average transmission is 40K, much larger than the average email."

Unlike classic Web page layout, Winters' in-house designer decided to place the newsletter's navigational column at the right side instead of the right for four reasons:

1. People read English from left to right, and Winters' primary goal was to get the newsletter read.
2. The newsletter doesn't have to cater to advertisers, who might prefer to have their messages on the left where they are read first.
3. Words aren't cut off for people who printed their copy to read later, or who view the issue through a smaller screen.
4. Right handed readers find right-side hotlinks easier to click on, because their mouse is on the right side.

The designer also decided against prototypical newsletter layout which puts the table of contents at the top center of the page above the articles. Instead this table of contents appears at the top of the right-hand navigation bar.

Winters says they made this decision because most recipients have their email set up with previews so they can read the first few lines before deciding whether to keep or delete something in their in-box. If they saw the hotlinked table of contents they might mistakenly think the newsletter is just another aggregator of links to articles on sites, which isn't as useful as a full- text newsletter.

Also, he says "I thought it would be better to let people see at least part of the first article as well as the headings of a few others. The idea is to draw people to read the entire message."

->Avoiding that "spam" look

According to a recent "Washington Post" article, spam has increased 600% during the past year. Winters took several precautions to avoid being caught in a filter or being deleted immediately by the recipients who assume anything HTML is spam. 1

1. The newsletter is sent "from" Brent Winters, which is a name recipients have now seen in their email boxes for years. He notes that sending from a department such as "sales" or using an email address in your from line is a big mistake. Most people will assume it's spam.
2. The subject line is personalized with the subscriber's first name.
3. The issue itself is also personalized with the subscriber's name, with a headline at the top reading "This Issue Prepared For: [name] [email]. (We'll bet this makes a very powerful impression on readers and on pass-alongs.)
4. MarketPosition Monthly's logo is prominently placed in the upper left corner, but not so big as to slow the download or obscure other content.

-> Recipient responses

No flames! Winters asked customer service to send him every single letter from a reader that came back as a result of the change, and he was braced to get at least a few complaints. "When you mail something to 470,000 people, you normally hear something negative."

But not this time.

In fact, "We got a great deal of feedback that the new format was better than the old one and it was something we had needed to do for a while."

However, Winters adds that if MarketPosition Monthly had been a shorter newsletter, say, one or two pages, he never would have tackled a HTML reformatting due to spam-appearance considerations. And his advice for others considering such a move is, "If it's very short, 1-2 pages, you may be able to stay in text, but if you're any longer then consider HTML."

USEFUL LINKS:

Sample of how Winter's HTML newsletter appears to recipients

Our October 2001 Case Study on Winter's marketing: Powerful Email Marketing to Sell and Retain Small Business Customers

Our "The Myth of the Email Sniffer" article

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EmailSherpa Info
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About EmailSherpa:
EmailSherpa is a weekly publication to educate, inform and aid marketers and publishers who use broadcast email for campaigns or email newsletters. We're a media company -- our business is to publish useful information for you. We are *not* an agency, a marketing consultancy, a list broker, nor a company collecting email addresses for any purpose other than to send you issues. We do *not* rent email names (ever). We value your privacy.

2003-06-20Av Gunnar Bråthen