Our favourite emails this April, from ethical beauty to elevated butter, and everything in between.

What follows is a selection of our favourite emails this month. Enjoy!

The Top 5 emails from February that ActionRocket loves ❤️

Check out the first of our top email designs for 2024!

A guide to subject lines and preheaders that will help you get your emails opened.

10 Top newsletters to subscribe to in 2024: Insights from the ActionRocket team.

Take a look at our December picks - the final top 5 emails to stand out to us in 2023.

We’ve decided to not go too crazy on the BF emails this month, and instead included a selection that spans all the monthly themes…

Step inside our chilling Email Weekly Halloween edition. The AI-infused interactive experience that’s sure to send a shiver down one's spine. Enter, if you dare…

For the average Joe/Joanne, Autumn is probably too early to start talking openly about the C-word (see Instagram stories featuring festive-laden supermarket shelves accompanied with the eye-roll emoji). But for brands, it’s a different story.

With Halloween upon us, here are some great ways to get your emails out of the dark!

The top 5 emails from October selected by ActionRocket.

A rundown of ActionRocket’s favourite emails from September.

With timely content and clever animation a-plenty, enjoy our rundown of August’s most impressive emails.

The Top 5 emails in July 2023 picked out by our team, we hope you enjoy!

A focus on the power of the Barbie Movie’s multi-channel marketing campaign and why it’s so successful.

Discover the Power of Augmented Reality, and explore its applications in Fashion, Design, and Accessibility.

Our top 5 emails in June 2023 and why we love them.

A rundown of our Top 5 emails from throughout May & why they’ve impressed us.

We take a look at the Email Markup Consortium's Email Accessibility Report. A staggering 99.9% of emails don’t meet the requirements to be 100% accessible. Let’s find out more…

If making your content accessible is new to you, don’t worry - you don’t have to do it alone! We’ve compiled a list of our favourite tools and sites that will guide you on your journey to accessibility.

We want everyone to read the copy in our emails without unnecessary effort. No matter who they are, what technologies they use, or how their body or mind operates. Here are some things to think about with accessibility in mind when writing your emails.

It’s been an exciting week for us as we saw our talented Head of Development Jay become a recognised Salesforce Marketing Champion!

We have compiled a helpful accessibility checklist for email designers, with some of the key things we consider when designing emails for our clients.

We thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at some of the brands on our radar who are smashing it across multiple channels. Take a look to get inspired!

Take a look at our guide for writing great copy so you can ensure that your QA checklist is full of lovely ticks and your client receives the best possible results.

This month we’re bringing you some brilliant examples of brands using interactivity within email, as well as some joyful nostalgia and clever user-generated content.

We answer the big question, amongst others - Is AI a helpful tool or just a passing fad? And ultimately… can it be stopped?

We all enjoy a beautifully crafted email. But all that lovely content can get buried in the trash folder without a strong subject line and preheader.

Want to start making your emails more accessible but don’t know where to start? Our senior coder Jay takes a closer look at email accessibility for developers. Giving some tips on simple adjustments you can begin making now.

This round-up includes gamification, editorial design, and reward email inspiration. Enjoy!

We recently celebrated International Women’s Day and we now want to shine a light on brands who took the event seriously, stood out in our inboxes, and produced great content.

We have lots of design eye candy to show you, paired with interactivity, clever copy, and shooting star rockets. A match made in heaven! 🫶

With unavoidable hearts and roses everywhere we wanted to give you a few ideas of unique gifts they may enjoy geeking out over.

Ah, 2022. You were a year of brilliant, innovative email campaigns. Let’s take a look at some of the stand-outs that graced our inboxes.

Do you need to write a creative brief? We discuss what a creative brief is, and our 10 steps to ensuring it is the most useful document possible.

The humble email doesn’t only outperform the most well-known marketing channels on the web, as much as it absolutely smashes them.

We have no doubt Email Marketing will still be just as relevant and important in 2023. Forget annual predictions, here are the things we’d love to see more of in our inboxes this year.

We think that personalisation and relevance in email will always be important. Read our 5 top tips to help you better connect and engage with your customers through personalisation.

For this months email round-up we’re shining a light on some festive email copy. Enjoy! 🎄

This month we have a great range of inspiring emails for you. From brands who have nailed their Black Friday messaging, excelled at pushing interactivity, and even sold us some loo roll.

Expect a fair amount of ghoulish gifs and terrifying taglines in October’s round-up. It would be rude not to in the month of Halloween, right? So grab your broomstick and let’s swoop in!

Making your brand identity work within the context of email can be hard work. So we’re taking a step back to focus on some of the fundamentals that are easy to achieve.

Our designer Ben takes a look at some of the impactful design trends of the year. Have a read to find out how they may influence your 2023 design decisions.

We’re here to inspire you with a round-up of brands who have stood out in our inboxes over the past month. We have eye catching cinemagraph animations, future thinking AR techniques, & more!

Fonts can play such an important part of digital messaging. In order to really bring your designs to life, here are our top 10 tips we’d recommend adhering to when you’re thinking about which fonts to use.

This month’s round-up includes good books 📚, good ice lollies 🍭, and good tips for your emails! 📩

How is Your ESP Reporting Opens & Proxying Images?

We have Superhost’s, super weather, and super emails to inspire you this month!

With email, much like editorial design, type and font play a big role in how the overall message is received. A simple change of font changes everything.

At ActionRocket, breaking the rules is not necessarily what we do, but copywriting for email is. Read on to find out the top 5 grammar rules made to be challenged.

This article answers all the big questions - What is an Email Design System? How isn’t it just a boring old template? And why do you need one!

Onboarding emails. The welcome journey that really counts to deliver an excellent first and lasting customer impression.

Struggling for creative ideas? It happens to the best of us. Here are some top tips from a designer to help you get inspired.

We’ve pulled some of the ActionRocket team together and chosen our favourite emails from this year so far, taking a look at the emails that have stood out to us the most.

Top tips on the benefits of, and how to use preview text in your preheader for success.

Copy, design, code. At ActionRocket we create designs that communicate information, so the concept of designing words is very close to our hearts.

We’ve got relevancy in email covered from all angles and to prove it, here are our top tips on doing it well.

Suits, sneakers and sportswear are what we are serving you up this month. Enjoy!

Here are our top 10 playlists to help you tap into your best creative self.

Creating content is not just about what you say, but how you say it. Top tips from Action Rocket on developing a strong tone of voice.

Our top email designs for April include bright, bold, and beautiful designs.

What will the world of email be like in 10 years? We reached out to 10 industry experts and asked them for their predictions.

We couldn’t ask you to enter our #CheersTo10Years competition without asking our own team to dig into their email archives! Have a read to find out our favourite email campaigns over the past 10 years.

We take a look back at email marketing copy, and uncover some significant changes and how it has evolved over the last 10 years.

We interview our founder and managing director Elliot Ross. Digging into his background, getting advice for future marketers, and he answers the big question - where did our name come from?!

Our top email designs for March, includes plants, pets, and St. Patricks Day!

Email copy is so much more than just words. Check out our five top tips on how to write winning email copy.

With International Women’s Day upon us, we sat down to talk career, wisdom and simply living life well with ten of the ladies who make ActionRocket such an inspiring place to work every day.

Roses are red, violets are blue, here’s our monthly round up, especially for you. 💝

What do we mean by email hierarchy and how can we define what works, and how can we apply these learnings throughout all of our email designs?

Do we still need view online links? Where should we put them and why are they there?

We’re here to help beat those January blues, with a round-up of some of the best email creatives we’ve received this month. Enjoy!

We’re here to give you a little last minute boost of Christmas email inspiration! We’ve rounded up some emails to show you brands who have nailed it this December, enjoy! 🎄

Design is such an important part of Digital Marketing in order to convey the correct message, so here are some core principles to offer guidance. Most should come naturally to any designer, but it is always useful to run through them to check that the message and composition is clear throughout.

It’s time to dust off that CSS snow and roll out your animated waving snowman! Our team have put their heads together to give you our top tips, do’s and don’ts for your holiday themed emails. Enjoy! ⛄

A great mix of inspirational emails for you this month! We have some welcoming onboarding, effective interactivity, and a special something for the animal lovers! 😻🐶

Which brands caught our attention throughout October? We have an awesome round-up including examples of animation, partnerships, and multichannel campaigns.

With summer drawing to a close, we’re just about ready to dust off the Halloween decorations and put our pumpkins out. So with that in mind we’re kicking off this months email round-up with our first early Halloween email 👻, enjoy!

Outlook has many known rendering quirks, but none are quite as infuriating as the 1px horizontal line bug! We shed some light on the issue and give some helpful solutions.

Here are some examples of brands who have stood out to us this month for their ability to think outside of the (in)box. Enjoy!

This article includes the results from the Email for All survey conducted in 2021. Its findings will help to encourage more informed conversations, making accessible emails the norm.

With a month full of thrilling sport it’s only right we include brands who have cleverly used this to their advantage. Theming their emails to ensure the excitement doesn’t stop at the television, and carries on through into the inbox! ⚽🎾

We have lots of inspiring email content for you this month. From support when searching for a Father’s Day gift, giving a human name to a coffee van, to peri peri and dough balls, enjoy!

We look at how numerous brands have utilised minimalist design techniques to enhance their email campaigns, and to present a bold impact in the inbox.

This month we're sharing our love of funky shoes, and returning to restaurants (YAY!) We show some great examples of simple techniques you can put into practice today to ensure your emails stand out in the inbox!

For Global Accessibility Awareness Day we’re talking to one of our most renowned clients, National Trust. We discuss why inclusivity is so important for National Trust as a brand, and their future digital plans to increase email standards even more.

Have we become a generation of scrollers? And if so, is the importance of "above the fold" design and it’s hierarchy becoming a little redundant?

We have come together with Paul Airy founder of Beyond the Envelope™, with our shared accessibility commitment and an aim to promote the importance of email accessibility.

We have a super selection of emails for all you Email Geeks to check out this month! From exciting partnership launches, to stand-out illustrations, to design leaders in practice.

In this Q&A we talk to Paul Airy, Accessibility & Usability Consultant. We learn the importance of accessibility from someone who is affected first hand, and he gives helpful advice to get your emails up to accessibility standards.

In this blog post we talk to Kait Creamer, CRM Marketer at Framer. We learn about her take on accessibility, why she thinks it’s important for email Marketers, and also how Framer incorporates accessible best practices for its users.

In this Q&A blog post we talk to Mark Robbins, Interactive Email Specialist at Salesforce. As an accessibility advocate we wanted to ask him questions around its importance within the email channel.

In this blog post we talk to Magan Le, Content Marketing Manager at Litmus. To understand a little more about her take on accessibility, why it’s important for Email Marketers, and how tools within Litmus can help.

We have a variety of cracking emails to show you this month! 🐣 With use of bright colour, large typography, and some donuts thrown in for good measure.

Our email guru Jay Oram took to the (virtual) stage last week, presenting at the Inbox Expo. Discussing all things email interactivity and animation, here's a sneak peek of his talk...

Is it just us or did it feel like Spring was in the air for moment there? The past month’s weather may have been unpredictable, but something that’s not let us down is the awesome emails that we have received. We hope you enjoy our February round-up!

Are thought provoking brands starting to boss the email game? Check out our January round-up to see who is standing out in the inbox for us this month.

Inserting images into emails is a relatively easy process. But when it comes to more specific images, they can be a bit more nuanced. We explore different techniques further, giving you some valuable and helpful tips.

We’ve pulled together email creatives which caught our attention throughout December. From innovative illustrations, to kind hearted copy, and great GIF’s. Enjoy!

It’s November, and with Black Friday and Christmas shopping all online this year, brands are having to do all they can to stand out in the inbox. Check out who’s been a cut above the rest in our round-up this month!

As part of our Darktober campaign we asked people to send us their best Dark Mode inspired designs. In this blog post we speak to our winner Andrea Davidson, and review her Dark Mode winning entry.

As the nights are now beginning to draw in, we look at the brands who have stood out. October has had our inboxes brimming with innovative content, from impressive collaborations to helpful hints and tips. Enjoy!

This week we’re excited to welcome Kasey Steinbrinck as a guest blogger. Kasey is a Content Marketing Manager at Email on Acid, and today he explains why Dark Mode emails are worth the extra investment.

We have now covered a whole range of Dark Mode topics from support , to creating logos , to setting text colours , now we want to look at images. What are the most common issues with imagery in Dark Mode emails? And how can you avoid them?

We’re progressively enhancing our newsletter Email Weekly every week, this week we wanted to take a closer look at how you can get your email colours dark mode ready and even set specific colours where possible.

Your emails may not be appearing the same in all email clients, we look at colors in dark mode and give you tips to help control them.

We’re progressively enhancing our newsletter Email Weekly every week and this week we wanted to make sure the text was exactly how we wanted it to be.

Designing for dark mode doesn’t have to be a daunting process, we’ve put together a handy list of all the things you should consider.

Dark Mode is a hot email topic right now within creative and developer circles, but for marketers with increasing pressure to deliver more ££ with limited budgets, should you care?

Today we are taking a look at dark mode logos, so let’s take a deep dive into how we have adapted our Email Weekly logo, and made it dark mode friendly!

Our Darktober series covers quick-wins and deep dives into how you can make your email designs look great in dark mode, the benefits, and the do’s and don’ts! We’re starting off the series with the age old question - Is dark mode worth it?

As the last of summer is holding on like a pub-goer as it approaches 9.59 pm, September also brought us fabulous email variety including 360 degree images and animals galore.

As we approach the official first day of Autumn, we’re wrapping up August with the final summer email vibes! This months round-up includes pleasing designs, personalisation, and photochromic glasses! 😎

Do you need to give your re-engagement emails a little love? We teamed up with our friends at Really Good Emails to inspire you and show some great brand examples.

Bloom & Wild have found a way to create a loved and trusted online brand. We look at their successful marketing strategy, and how email has elevated their customer loyalty.

Here are our top tips to beat that creative block and stay connected to each other while working remote.

This month we’ve seen some great use of personalisation and value added content, keeping our inboxes brimming with good emails!

Preference centres and segmentation techniques are a great way to ensure you're sending out the right email content. Opening up a two-way dialog with subscribers can strengthen your relationship and improve their user experience.

Our inboxes have been full of eye catching emails this month! With brands using clever copy to entice those opens, and treating us to some awesome animations.

Our top emails for May have inspired us to get creative! Making us want to redecorate our homes, dig out the fairy lights, and make DIY duvet forts.

As we are embracing remote working it’s been vital for us to ensure both efficiencies and team morale are maintained successfully. So how do we stay productive AND sane?

Marketers often invest time and resource into designing and coding large master templates (also sometimes referred to as design systems). These can make the process of producing new mailings significantly easier and more efficient.

If you use Gmail, chances are you’ve seen flight details, online purchases, or confirmation emails look a little different in your inbox. So what are these types of emails? And how can they enhance how information is digested?

Our designer Ben looks at how brands have had to adapt their marketing strategies amidst COVID-19.

This month we're sharing our love of Biscoff, funky socks, and house plants. The working from home essentials, right?

We all want our subscribers to open our emails - a key metric that people have been chasing since the dawn of email. We wanted to focus on some attributes of your email envelope that could help increase your open rates!

What do your customers expect from your emails? Understanding this is key to providing them with the right content at the right time.

Marketers have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders currently, with many customers turning to them for reassurance and guidance. Whilst it’s easy to get wrapped up in tactics and KPI’s, it’s important to remember how far authenticity can actually go.

With everything feeling a little uncertain right now, we want you to take a 5 minute tea break and enjoy our selection of top emails from March. So boil the kettle and enjoy!

We’ve put together a list of resources to help inspire across the email community.

Patagonia are an outdoor clothing company who initially caught my attention by making waves for their environmental activism. After subscribing to their emails I wanted to delve a little deeper as to why they’re also rocking the email channel.

Yup it’s that time of year again! Our inbox’s were an abundance of hearts and flowers this month, but we wanted to mix things up for you and throw in some pancakes for good measure.

Have you ever wondered the best way to hide elements in email? We take a look at how you can target a range of email clients and the attributes you can use to hide elements within them.

Due to the influx of all things Vegan in January we thought we would dedicate this months top email designs to all things Vegan, enjoy!

We've searched our inboxes for our favourite emails from brands celebrating the New Year.

We finish the year with a round-up of our top emails from December, brining you a final array of brands who have jumped out in our inbox this month!

At this festive time of year, the team in the studio has been looking back at our suggestions to make 2019 even more successful. Were our inboxes filled with interactive,  mobile-friendly emails, personalised just for us?

This year we've already received some great alternative Black Friday emails, sending us some calm amongst the storm.

We have put together a table full of information on all the (current) email clients that have implemented dark mode. As well as some tips on how to better design your emails so they still look great.

SheerLuxe is an online lifestyle magazine and a brand fairly new to me. Since signing up to their emails, it has become one of my favourites to pop up in the inbox - and has proven very popular throughout our studio!

As the nights draw in this month and we all get used to 4pm darkness, we have our monthly email round-up to brighten your day!We've tried to wade through the array of pumpkins and give you a well rounded insight into our inbox this October.

What email trends took off in 2019? Which were your favourite, and why?

We can't avoid social media, it consumes our everyday life. With everyone 'doing it for the gram' , are the negatives now starting to outweigh the positives?

This month we've sourced our whole teams inbox's to give you an array of our top September emails! Hopefully our choices will inspire and delight your email senses, enjoy!

While Bex is away, the dev team are taking over for the week. Check out what we’ve done here.

To celebrate the summer we've produced a bumper version of our design review for your viewing pleasure.... enjoy!

We can take everything from design, HTML build, social assets and strategy development off your hands. Here are some reasons we think a kick-arse email marketing agency could help you.

we decided to find out what CRM marketers would really do with more time. We took to Twitter and asked the all important question, what would you do with more time?

There are no lengths we wouldn't go to in order to source the very best of the inbox and this month we have some amazing examples. Hopefully, this variety will titillate the senses and provide inspiration. Enjoy!

What is AMP For Email? Should you be using it? And if so, how should you be using it?

Summer is here and the sales are hitting hard, as each bank holiday comes around inboxes swell with offers aplenty. Which retailers made there mark this month I hear you say? Stay tuned for the best of the month...

I've got a 'bee' in my bonnet about locating great CRM programmes and next in line for review are the children's book specialists - Bookabees who show that you can be small but mighty when it comes to nailing great customer comms.

Mmmmmmm burger... sorry distracted there. In-between demolishing as many easter eggs as humanly possible and the continued obsession with finding the best burger we thought we'd share the round up of what March had to offer... Enjoy!

We take you through the email journey of Bulb and how easy they make it.

With the love filled month long gone, we thought we'd share what emails hit the heart strings and which fell flat. Not into hearts and flowers? Keep an eye lower down for more canine fun 🐶 ♥️

Our designer Sam looks at Nike and their striking and eye catching email designs.

Good riddance to January... with hibernation, healthy eating and abstinence what excitement did the inbox bring to supplement the lack of sun and fun elsewhere? Well I'm glad you asked, don't say we don't give you anything 😉

In the world of Digital Marketing, every brand aims to deliver the perfect email experience to its subscribers. But what about those who have needs beyond your standard subscribers?

The new retail dynamic breeds challenges, consumers may not understand the business model and need help getting the right product. With consumers confused and no retail point with friendly staff to help guide this is where good CRM comes into play.

We used last weeks Email Weekly newsletter to try and determine where users see the fold across different devices and browsers, each line was a separate CTA collecting information on where the fold appeared for email recipients.

Thanks for taking part in this weeks special #EmailWeekly! We wanted to gage some insight into whether the email fold is a thing, finding out the average location of the 'fold'. You have helped us identify this, and we will follow up with the results!

We love to push email’s boundaries creating beautiful engaging emails for our clients, using Taxi for Email as a platform to bridge the gap between designing, editing and sending email campaigns.

Now January has hit, the Quality Street have all been eaten and everyone has over indulged in sequins, merriment and listening to bad Christmas tunes. Which emails made a lasting mark during the festive time?

We’ve left you with our top articles written by Industry leaders, summarising how 2018 played out. It now only seems fit to follow with our own email industry roundup and what we think 2019 holds for email.

At Action Rocket we keep abreast of all the latest hacks and fixes to ensure our clients get the best emails. Background images can create some great effects in email design and really bring it to life.

With inboxes going crazy this month filled with monochrome masterpieces a plenty, we thought we'd show a collection of our favourites that bucked the black and white trend.

We are just weeks away from the influx of 2019 digital and email trends, to bemuse and panic marketers into questioning if their current email programme is enough.

Just as we feel a little cheated when we take our family to visit the expensive Santa with the dodgy beard - if you think back now - have your campaigns left you with the same feeling?

We break down just what Google is playing at and what your team should do to keep your emails performing. As well as looking at how the Promotions tab has affected emails over the last five years.

To celebrate the upcoming festive period we thought we'd resurrect our monthly design wrap up, we know Christmas has come early! Here are a few of our favourites from October.

Treatwell are well known for their creativity and their eye-catching ads, we found it a breath of fresh air when they suggested giving the same inbox experience as their consumers, to their partners and suppliers.

With our International Animation Day Week, coming to an end, we thought we would leave you with our most recent and fun animation work from our studio!

With all the animations you are now inspired to create and use in your emails - you'll want to know the best way to do it.

As well as soaking up all of the knowledge from our team of digital experts, our intern Chris wanted to have a little play with some email animation.

Designing HTML email has its challenges. Now and again we receive a brief that shines with creative possibilities, the promotional email for Blue Planet II was certainly one of them.

So, Sunday 28th October is International Animation Day, but we aren’t content with celebrating this on just one day. So... let’s celebrate International Animation Week!

We’ve pulled together some of the B2B emails that we managed to accumulate online (shout out to Reallygoodemails.com) that are worth sharing.

A bombproof button that works on everything, even lotus notes…I’ve been coding at ActionRocket now for almost 6 months and one thing I have learnt is one size does not fit all.

October 10th was the second Codepen Brighton Meet up. An awesome idea to bring together a group of codepen users of any level of coding experience and no matter the size of the codepen.

We discuss everything we know so far about AMP for email!

This week the Action Rocket team went to Litmus Live in London, here are some of our highlights and favourite tweets from the day!

The GDPR is finally live! Here are the best GDPR tweets from the last dew days.

This month, emails are doing a rain dance with a spot of yellow fever thrown in for good measure!

Here are my chosen email designs from August.

This article is about creating silky-smooth awesome GIFs with a tiny file size.

Another month has passed here, meaning we are ready to gather up our favourite email designs! Here are the ones we have chosen from the last few weeks.

it’s important to stay up to date with just what you can do where. Here are 5 great resources to help you keep track of the latest updates.

Stand out email campaigns from the past month.

Using an emoji is a simple way to engage with your subscribers while keeping subject lines short and precise. A lot can be said with an emoji and at only 1 character, you're not using up valuable space.

Take a look at some of the campaigns that have caught my eye this month, feel free to let me know what your thoughts are in the comments below!

<p>d0c079c1-b8d4-458d-a169-81231e160816 56b5c671-7f5a-4cc9-b353-1212d43820d0 2f2748d2-2bd8-4b2c-bea2-995159cc32e3 ce2769dd-15bb-4fa7-bc8f-d91719d6359e a394bd74-eb25-43f8-adfb-a537bd8eca65 1990d67f-d596-4af4-b1b3-bb11c152ab05 At our last Email Meetup we switched from peering into Future of Email and took a stone cold look at the past.Now email has pretty much fully evolved into the mobile era, we thought it would be interesting to take a look back at some nice familiar brands and see how they made the leap into mobile - and also if we can spot any trends along the way.</p> <h2> BOSE 2010:</h2> <p>View email • Compact view• Tiny, cramped text• Print-like layout• Not responsive This email from 2010 certainly has a Bose feel to it, but is clearly designed for a time when we looked at our email on a bigger screen.</p> <p>The tight, print-like view does all it can to squash a lot of content into a small space.</p> <h2> 2016:</h2> <p>View email • Increased white space• Bigger text and line height• Modular layout• Responsive Jump to 2016 and it immediately obvious that this design has come a long way.</p> <p>Content is more spread out and easier to scan and read, with increased white space, larger text and line heights, and a cool modular layout.</p> <p>Add in the responsive design, some great photography and we have ourselves a winning email.</p> <h2> Spotify 2013:</h2> <p>View email • Nice design, but a little more cramped towards the end…• Has a desktop feel• Responsive design - great!• But some content disappears on mobile - weird!This 2013 design from Spotify still looks pretty fresh today, but has some more compact design elements towards the end (Scroll to Spotify Picks https://litmus.com/scope/puxbtnpv93ee).</p> <h2> This gives it a distinct desktop-y feel.</h2> <p>On an interesting note, notice that the black side bar totally drops out on mobile? This raises the question that if it’s ok to drop out on mobile, is it worth including at all?

Re-engagement emails are a great way to clean and re-activate dormant parts of your list. It’s also a great opportunity to single out customers and make them feel appreciated and heard.

We're at the Email Innovations Summit in Vegas (baby!) today and tomorrow. Here are our tweetable highlights from the design and content side of things.

“No matter how much you dislike the thought of using Snapchat as a business, you should probably be getting used to it'“

<p>No, we're not having brisket.If you were going to have one epic #emailgeek dinner party, this would probably be the line up.</p> <p>If you aren't prepared to clean up after these lot though, they are still probably worth a follow on Twitter.</p> <p>We've pulled 60** of our favourite global geeks in no particular order… 1.</p> <h2> Becs Rivett-Kemm 2. Jaina Mistry 3.

Kate Spade subject lines have been calling out to me for a while now, here are a couple of my favourites GIF's from the last few months.

<h2> 1.</h2> <p>Hierarchy Email is a communication channel, the number one aim is to get a message across clearly, correctly, and cleverly.</p> <p>Clearly - Can I read it? Do I understand it?

In 2016 there will be lots of things that will progress and develop for email marketers, but what about the things that are likely to stay the same? Buckle up children, we're set for an 'exciting' year.

Black Friday is responsible for a surge in promotional marketing emails every year, making it pretty difficult to stand out in the inbox.

<p>If you receive the #emailweekly regularly, you have been subject to innovative/ridiculous designs, delayed sends, obscure subject lines and the odd error here and there.</p> <p>Some of these were on purpose, others weren't.</p> <p>I guess you could say we've kind of learnt something from each one.We like to think of the weekly as a playground for email code so we thought we would bare all for the eyes of our subscribers.</p> <p>Here is what we've found from AA/AB testing/sending the email weekly so far:</p> <p>A/A tests (on purpose) EmailWeekly #29 Subject line:</p> <p>GOOD EMAIL ¿ pheasant! downpour!

Lucky enough to be an email marketer in London on the 29th? Then you may know about the annual ghost table hunt we've organised... basically, an excuse to have another #emaildrinks, dress up and hang with a cool bunch of people.

Let's see how far you get down this list without wanting to buy something... It's not just me.

We at ActionRocket were lucky enough to attend and speak at both Boston & London this year. Both events had great speakers and a diverse range of topics covered. We couldn’t see every single presentation, but here are just some of the highlights for us

Harvey Nichols thought outside the box and this is the campaign they came up with. We love this idea.

If you're an ecommerce company (or you work at one), you'll know the struggle of getting your checkout process seamless and as user-friendly as possible. You may also be aware that the average basket abandonment rate is around 70% .

<p>I’m two months deep into living with an Apple Watch, and while it’s not quite ready for the mainstream, I’d say that wearables will be the future for a lot of us.</p> <p>Sure, it’s a slightly clunky first-gen product, but it definitely has its exciting little moments that feel like the future.</p> <p>Obviously the thing we’re most interested in is the Apple Watch’s email abilities.</p> <p>These may at first appear limited in their current state but, again, offer up an interesting glimpse of things to come.</p> <p>First-glance shortcomings Take a quick peek at the Apple Watch’s email experience and you’ll no doubt hit on these pretty glaring issues.</p> <p>A teeny-tiny screen - The smaller Apple Watch has a screen size of 1.3 inches making conventional email viewing problematic.</p> <p>Emails are text only - No standard HTML to see here, keep your plain text versions brief.</p> <p>No CTAs - No web browser means no CTAs No metrics - No images and no CTAs mean no open and read tracking.</p> <p>Dig a little deeper Look a little closer and it’s plain to see that Apple are aware of these issues, and you can already see some of the groundwork that’s been put down to combat them.</p> <p>Watch specific email - Apple have created a special email part just for the Apple Watch.</p> <p>This means you can send a hidden version of your email that will only be displayed on the Apple Watch.</p> <p>Consider us impressed, especially seeing as it supports...</p> <p>Basic HTML formatting - That’s right, while the Apple Watch ignores conventional desktop/mobile HTML it does support limited HTML within the watch specific email.</p> <p>Formatting includes bold, italics, text colour, lists, quotes and more … (See ‘current’ watch example in article title image) Deep app linking - While you can’t add a CTA, doesn’t mean Apple can’t.</p> <p>Phone numbers & addresses are automatically linked to the watch phone and maps apps respectively.</p> <p>Meaning deep-linking to 3rd party watch apps could be possible in the future.As wearables get increasingly popular it’s a safe bet that these email capabilities will be further enhanced .</p> <p>To be honest, I’m still pretty stoked that version 1 of that watch has a super-special email part for it, and is something that is definitely required to make email more watch-friendly.Could we be seeing the future for a new breed of email? If we have watch-specific email, could watch-specific email actions be around the corner?

As you may or may not know, the HTML standard for email is a mess. There is no defined standard, it is more a way of coding that is a reliable as we can get in as many email platforms as we can.

<p>A couple of weeks ago we held an evening meetup in association with Campaign Monitor , to discuss where email design and strategy is headed.</p> <p>Below are a couple of talks from our team, plus full videos are on the Future Of Email microsite, including Becs Rivett, Matt Hayes and Parry Malm .</p> <p>To hear about future events first, get our weekly update, #EMAILWEEKLY .</p> <h2> Pixel Art in Email:</h2> <p>The Past, Present and Future Mike Ragan, Action Rocket Mike shares some thoughts on Pixel Art in email, including examples from Pizza Express, Sony Playstation and more.</p> <p>The Future of Email Design Sam Beddoes, Action Rocket Sam looks at how email designers are pushing the boundaries of the channel using HTML5, live imagery and advanced mobile techniques.</p>

<p>With around 130 enthusiastic email marketers in attendance, the conversations (and beer) flowed effortlessly.</p> <p>We even managed to quickly round up a decent £153.10 for the Nepal Earthquake Appeal - thanks to those that were so generous!It was a great turnout and the response was reaffirming of the communities' desire to learn and talk email;</p> <h2> the waitlist was bursting at the seams.</h2> <p>With that said, if you weren't able to make it (or just want to re-live it) here's a quick recap:</p> <p>Looking forward to #FutureOfEmail pic.twitter.com/ugXou7kEEs — Charles Southey (@csouthey) April 28, 2015 But wait I thought the mantra was email more? Haha #FutureOfEmail pic.twitter.com/dk1xuh1LCa — Parry Malm (@ParryMalm) April 28, 2015 #FutureOfEmail Become a spreadsheet ninja!

<p>SOLD OUT #FUTUREOFEMAIL This April the 28th, our good friends from Campaign Monitor are popping over to Shoreditch as part of their Giving Back Roadshow.</p> <p>We've all decided to make the most of being in the same town and thought it would be a good idea to co-host an email meet up.</p> <p>The event will be a great opportunity to get together, have a drink, eat some food and talk all things email.</p> <p>We've managed to pull together an impressive speaker line-up so your bound to leave feeling inspired (and the swag bag is looking pretty awesome too).</p> <p>The meet up will start at 6pm on the 28th at The Trampery, Old Street, EC1V 9EY - RSVP here Schedule - 6pm Doors open, complimentary beverages and snacks 6:30pm WelcomeSpray and Pray is Not the Way - Becs Rivett Starting the evening will be email designer, strategist and blogger Becs Rivett, who will explaining why the "email blast" model is (thankfully) dead.</p> <p>Tune in to find out why understanding trigger-based emails, contextual relevancy and more are essential to running a successful email strategy.</p> <p>6:50pm Is Open Time Context the New Segmentation? - Matt Hayes, Kickdynamic For email marketers, relevant and timely content is everything.</p> <p>And while you can write great copy, being able to personalise images at open time provides amazing opportunities to delight your recipients.In this talk by Matt Hayes, we'll be looking at real-world examples of how brands have used dynamic images to send engaging content, as well as the technology behind these techniques.</p> <h2> 7:10pm Pixel Art in Email:</h2> <p>The Past, Present and Future - Mike Ragan, Action Rocket Bigger than just a retro fad, pixel art is blowing up the email design world.</p> <p>In this show-and-tell by bitmaster Mike Ragan, we'll be looking at some of the campaigns that popularised "designing for images off", not to mention, the benefits of this rather novel approach.</p> <p>7:30pm 10-minute break 7:40pm You're Probably Split-Testing your Emails Wrong and Here's Why - Parry Malm, Phrasee Sure, A/B split testing subject lines is nothing new.</p> <p>However, if you've ever run or viewed an inconclusive test, you'll likely agree that it's generally done badly.In this talk by "digital anarchist" Parry Malm, we'll look at a scientific approach to split testing, with a couple of Anchorman references for good measure.</p> <p>8pm The Future of Email Design - Sam Beddoes, Action Rocket What opportunities to send engaging email are staring us in the face...</p> <p>And what ones are just out of reach?

If you're about to commission or embark on some international email design work then here is a fairly concise list of things you may want to consider.

<p>Possibly the most crucial time period for you to impress your subscribers, the welcome series.</p> <p>It's best to make an effort than rock up under dressed designed right? Boden's welcome series really grabbed me, not only with their pattern/colour contrast but with their ongoing relationship theme and the thought that seems to have gone into the user experience.</p> <p>The copy also gives the brand a personal feel without being over the top, including a nice mix of informational & marketing content.</p> <p>It's interesting to see video in a welcome series that is also seasonal.</p> <p>Top points for innovation, branding, message and imagery.</p> <h2> Same day Subject line: Thanks for making the first move...

<p>For some time now Google have been doing their best to shake up the email experience.</p> <p>They’ve introduced tabs, schema , priority inbox , promotions view and most recently Inbox to name but a few features.</p> <p>In fact over the last couple of years it feels like Google have been doing more than anyone else to progress email.Surprisingly one area where Google have fallen short is support for CSS media queries.</p> <p>These make it possible for emails to automatically alter their layout to best suit the device they are being read on (i.e makes them responsive), in this case - mobile devices.</p> <p>Some of the formatting techniques added by media queries include:</p> <p>Single column layout (no pinching or zooming required) Larger images and text More concise menus Mobile specific content iOS-vs-Inbox-2 Ok, I admit it’s tricky to visualise, so we’ve knocked up an honest-to-goodness GIF to show you a world both with and without media queries.As you can see, the lack of media query support provides a pretty lacklustre email viewing experience for Google Inbox users (It’s worth noting that the Gmail app has the same issues).I’m sure you’re aware of what a noisey bunch internet peeps are, so it comes as a surprise that there’s been no moaning about Google’s email apps and their inferior email experience.</p> <p>Do Gmail/Inbox users know what they are missing? A quick glance at the reviews for the Gmail/Inbox app reveals swathes of happy 5 star ratings, so what gives?

<p>This email has just taken email creativity to a new level, so much so that members of the team and email community are still in a state of 'Why didn't I think of that?'.The concept is based on the idea that their customers are most likely sitting at their desk but can't browse the site as their boss may be watching them.</p> <p>They are offered the option of viewing a spreadsheet or 'I don't do spreadsheets' which goes to the homepage.Take a look at the campaign from Bonobos which landed in our inbox yesterday.</p> <h2> Subject Line:</h2> <p>=VLOOKUP(Your boss is behind you) We were applauding the email concept before we even realised that the spreadsheet actually calculates the formula which works out which product is right for you (among other stuff).</p> <h2> Just brilliant. Here are some of the formulas at work:</h2> <p>Change the highlighted fields and checkboxes to give you refined results/suggested products:If you select the largest size it says your spirit animal is a mythical beast thing:And as you'd expect, if you select the smallest it says you are a Wallaby:But it doesn't end there, here are other features we found amusing:It also has extra calls to action hidden in the comments:</p> <p>Pretty sure this one will go down in email marketing folklore and has definitely set the 2015 creative standards for the industry.</p>

Here's a brief look at the email design related discussion from yesterday's Reddit AMA with the Google Inbox team .

Gmail users tend to be male, drive a Mazda and earn more than Yahoo! Mail users, according to the newly released YouGov Profiler . The profiler allows us to delve into YouGov's mass of collected data on the UK public, and by filtering by brand, build out a bit more of a user picture.

Sometimes your users know what they are subscribing too, other times they may just sign-up out of curiosity and have no expectations whatsoever. In my case it was the latter...

<p>Did you miss the Completely Email Conference last friday? Fear not, Elliot & Jacques' deck can be found below ( click here for Mike's), along with some tweetable takeaways.</p> <h2> Enjoy...

<p>This week we investigated how 50 of the best online boutique retailers make the most of their online newsletter sign-up.</p> <p>We’re interested to see how the smaller boutique fashion brands generate organic leads online.</p> <p>Over 96% had a newsletter sign-up, around half of which had the sign-up box prominent on the home page with either a pop-up or the sign-up box above the fold.</p> <p>Pop-up The brands eager to get their potential customers signing up use a pop-up when visiting the site.Me+Em outlines the benefits of registering in 3 easy-to-scan bullet points.</p> <p>Along with effortlessly cool imagery and easy to tap buttons.</p> <p>Far Fetch give the user the low down in one sentence.</p> <p>The user also has the option of opting out of what can sometimes be an annoying barrier to the website.</p> <p>Atterley Road go straight in with the offer and you receive your code straight away which prompted me to fill up my basket.</p> <p>This is a great way to secure that first purchase from your new subscriber.</p> <p>Atterley Road were not the only online boutiques that showered me with discounts.</p> <p>My Wardrobe gives the subscriber the code straight away as a pop-up in the bottom right corner.</p> <p>Centre stage Slightly less intrusive and almost as effective is making sure the sign-up box is center stage on your home page.</p> <p>If connecting directly with your customers is important then give your sign-up box decent retail space.</p> <p>I like the way toast does this, having the box centered is eye catching;</p> <p>they surround the box with beautiful imagery and products.</p> <p>The thank you confirmation replaces the sign-up box reassuring the user that they have subscribed successfully.</p> <p>Colette stood out for me, I loved the layout of their home page.</p> <p>The music adds another brand experience making the home page audibly as well as visually appealing.</p> <p>The email sign-up is prominent in the bottom left corner and is easy to register to with just one click.</p> <p>Couventure and the Garbstore go all out by using the left hand column to feature the newsletter sign-up.</p> <p>They give information about their newsletters as well as collecting name, email and which product area the user is most interested in.</p> <p>Drop down Another option is to include a drop down once someone clicks the box.</p> <p>Avoiding subscribers mistyping their email addresses Shopbop ask you to re type your email address.</p> <p>This can be a tad frustrating for the user but it does mean you have the correct email addresses in your list.</p> <p>Another way of doing this is having an opt-in email to confirm the email address.</p> <p>ShopBop’s thank you message is short and snappy with a great tone of voice.</p> <p>Astley Clarke has a small pop up, that collects gender as well as email address, this enables them to target straight away with out having to geth the subscriber to upadate their preferences.</p> <h2> Top Rocket Tips: 1.</h2> <p>Organic leads through your website are a great way to start the conversation and hopefully prompt first purchase for new subscribers.</p> <p>With this in mind make your sign-up prominent and give it the retail space it deserves.</p> <h2> 2.</h2> <p>Keep them on the home page – either collect the email address or use a pop-up if you want to collect more info or give a discount.</p> <p>The home page is your shop window, there is no point diverting away to a separate uninspiring page.</p> <h2> 3.</h2> <p>Sum up the benefits of registering, and use words like member, or club or ‘you’re on the list’ this will help make people feel a part of your brand 4.</p> <p>Collect information but make it as easy as possible.</p> <p>More importantly make sure you use it!Think about your copy, keep it short and friendly throughout every stage, it doesn’t have to be service led and is a great way to start the conversation.</p> <h2> 5.</h2> <p>Say thank you – try to make this informal and give a short description of what the new subscriber is likely to use in the inbox.</p> <p>It also reassures the subscriber that they have successfully subscribed.</p>

<p>Thinking of sending out a spooky campaign this October? Seek inspiration below from some of our favourite designs this month.</p> <h2> Accessorize Subject line:</h2> <p>Win our Halloween treats | Beware of these bewitching accessories...</p> <h2> Stella McCartney Subject line:</h2> <p>BOO!

<p>Every now and again email campaigns may get deployed to the wrong segment, with a spelling mistake or the odd price error - but not all 'mistakes'  are as genuine as they might plead...The fact that emails with 'oops' or 'sorry' in the subject line generally have increased open rates (ours increased by 10% when we faked a test subject line), it makes sense that marketers would try their luck by invoking curiosity in subscribers.</p> <p>So how do you go about telling a real 'oops' from a complete load of poop? Raising their hands , Made.com recently admitted to sending out the wrong Scottish independence outcome email on purpose, although some are refusing to accept that too and that it's a cover up for a genuine mistake.</p> <p>Sending out a celebration of independence discount instead of the 'no' vote version was verging on controversial.</p> <p>Not enough to seriously offend but enough to cause hundreds of tweets.</p> <p>We don't mind, just let us in on your findings...</p> <p>(Gif credit goes to @AimeCx) On a pleasant note , it's nice to see brands embrace their seemingly genuine mistakes and come through on an opportunity to earn some points with their customers.</p> <h2> This email from Fab (scoping credit:</h2> <p>Justine Jordan ) takes their mistake of sending an unfinished email and turns it into an opportunity to offer their subscribers 10% off.</p> <p>This could have risked a few unsubscribes if legit but what user would be able to stay annoyed at these cute fluffy fur-balls offering a discount?

<p>Call to actions are the key to any email campaign, these little beauties help your user decide on where and what to click - not that they always do as they are told.</p> <p>There are many different varieties of CTA's and the impact of using the right one can be colossal (we've all heard the story).</p> <p>So what makes us so inclined to click or tap one CTA and not another? You have to admit, there is definately something about wanting to click inside a bright coloured rectangle...</p> <p>Since day dot.com If you have children, or maybe you used to be one yourself, then you are most likely aware of the obsession they seem to have with buttons.</p> <p>Racing their siblings to the pedestrian crossing, playing with toy phones, remotes, doorbells, keyboards, fusing the house by flicking light switches or resetting the wireless (oh, the frustration);</p> <p>I think you get the picture, kids love buttons.</p> <p>So has this always been an indication of what is to come in adulthood?

<p>Fashion brands seem to have acquired a bad reputation with their email marketing habits, until recently.</p> <p>With London fashion week taking over the capital, our inbox has been bursting with some strong campaigns.</p> <h2> Fashion marketers, take note: United Nude Subject line:</h2> <p>Cross the lines Using whitespace to attract attention is a great (and effortless) tactic.</p> <h2> We like whitespace.</h2> <p>And sometimes a gif is all you need but here, the fluid animation doesn't take away from the products but enhances them.</p> <p>The only change I'd make would be to increase the space between the bottom product and the CTA.</p> <h2> Animation: H&M Subject line:</h2> <p>New trends to love Keeping on topic with LFW, this sketchbook style campaign works well.</p> <h2> Yoox.com Subject line:</h2> <p>Who is on Next? 2014 - yoox.com presents the winners Simple does it.</p> <h2> Hogan Subject line:</h2> <p>The season pop trend This campaign caught my eye with the clean, simple style and the attention grabbing hero image (but they could have embedded the video for bonus points).</p>

We've been doing some testing with Apple's production release of iOS8, naturally focusing on the mail client, and one of the main findings so far has been a lack of support for the <video> tag.

<p>U2 have barely finished up on stage at today's Apple announcement, but we figured we'd take a quick look at a couple of the more immediate changes the new iPhone could bring to your email coding workflow.iOS 8's native email client, which will be shipped to iPhone users in a couple of weeks, doesn't change much in terms of email rendering, so it's pretty much business as usual there.</p> <p>However both sizes of iPhone 6 mark a departure in screen width from previous models.</p> <p>Before we start, we need to remember that unlike Android devices, when it comes to media queries, iOS devices report their screen size already considering the pixel density.A high definition screen on Android that contains, say, 640 physical pixels, will be reported to the HTML rendering engine as 640 pixels wide.</p> <p>A retina iPhone, on the other hand, will consider that 1 high resolution pixel is formed of 4 (2x2) physical screen pixels, and therefore as far as CSS is concerned, the screen is infact 320px wide.Currently an iPhone 5S screen is made up of 1136x640 pixels, at 326 ppi.</p> <p>Once you consider @2x sizes for the retina screen, this is reported as 568px high and 320px wide.</p> <p>So to target the iPhone 5S using media queries, we need to target a screen size that is at least 320px wide in portrait view.The iPhone 6, on the other hand, comes in two, larger flavours.</p> <p>The 6 (smaller) is 750px wide, which with 2x pixels is reported as 375px.</p> <p>The larger iPhone 6+, is 1080px wide, at scaled 2.6x pixel density, which is 414px wide as far as media queries are concerned.* *Edit - there's a bit of debate around the CSS size for the 6+ screen, and it currently could be 360px (at 3x pixel density) or 414px (at 2.6x).</p> <p>The 414px argument is supported by the amount of 413px based media queries on Apple's new site, and several iOS dev articles .</p> <p>What that means for email designers, is that if you've previously been specifically targeting iPhone users as being on a device that is 320px wide, you'll need to adjust your code to also consider iPhones that are effectively 360px, 375px or 414px wide.</p> <p>One approach that we've adopted in recent years is to move away from device-specific media queries, and instead make our email 100% wide for any screen below 640px wide.</p> <p>(640px, up until now, being double the width of the iPhone screen, which makes the maths nice and easy for responsive techniques) And what about the watch? Well that's the million dollar question, or at least the starting-at-$349 one.</p> <p>We'll find out more in 2015, but from the keynote and the new look Apple site , there does appear to be some kind of mail app on the watch itself.</p> <p>Mail.app on Apple Watch has an inbox view, which looks broadly similar to that on iOS, including part of the subject line and a short preheader piece of text.</p> <p>It's also possible to view emails on the Watch itself, but as all of the demos show a regular text based email, it's unclear how much HTML capability there is.</p> <p>As there doesn't seem to be a web browser for the Watch, it does seem unlikely that there would be that much in the way of HTML support.The saving grace for marketing email, of course, is that it's unlikely that users would be able to convert in any meaningful way using the Watch, so perhaps it's better to use what subject line and pre-header copy we can to entice users to open the email on their phone.Time will tell.</p> <p> More Campaign Monitor's thoughts</p>

<p>We had an awesome time this week at The Email Design Conference in Boston.</p> <p>Here's our highlights from the Twitter feed.</p> <h2> New Ideas Good discourse at #TEDC14 .</h2> <p>Next generation of email creators don’t want shortcuts, they want to know how to do new things.</p> <h2> Refreshing.</h2> <p>— TrendlineInteractive (@trendlinei) August 21, 2014 Only use a hack if it's required to keep the integrity of the design intact.</p> <p>#TEDC14 pic.twitter.com/k6t9BvdQTh — Brian Graves (@briangraves) August 22, 2014 Every email you send needs to be valuable, engaging, necessary and true.</p> <p>Every email that isn't all 4 erodes subscriber trust.</p> <p>#TEDC14 — Matt Byrd (@mparkerbyrd) August 20, 2014 Opens just suck as a metric.</p> <p>We don't look at opens, we look at clicks.</p> <p>— @John4man #TEDC14 — Carey Mercier (@carey_mercier) August 22, 2014 Forget industry "baselines" ...</p> <p>Your own audience is unique! Only try to beat yourself.</p> <p>#tedc14 #TEDCNTACC — Matt Byrd (@mparkerbyrd) August 20, 2014 "Sending mediocre email is no longer acceptable." When was it ever acceptable?

<p>I was lucky enough to attend this years Litmus conference in Boston, 'Merica and to represent team Action Rocket.It was awesome.</p> <p>The Litmus guys know how to do stuff right.</p> <p>It was pretty much constant contact, either listening to brilliant talks from some of the finest minds in email or chatting with other attendees about our common interest:</p> <p>Email .There was so much going on that its all a bit of a blur now but here were some of the highlights for me:</p> <h2> Meeting people.</h2> <p>Getting to connect in real life with likeminded people is absolutely invaluable, worth the ticket alone.</p> <p>The Litmus staff were a highlight all by themselves.</p> <p>They exuded energy and were both entertaining and informative throughout.</p> <h2> I bet they are knackered now.</h2> <p>Kevin got everyone bouncing with an incredibly motivating summing up for email people to step up to the challenge and keep moving forward - think "Father to murdered son speech" from Gladiator and you got the level of attention garnered from the room (I actually looked around nervously a few times during this to see if anyone was going start a riot, I was ready).</p> <p>Hackers chatting email on stage, felt like I was watching my favourite stars talk about their latest work on Rickie Lake or something.</p> <p>Speed dating sessions were a brilliant idea and a huge success.</p> <p>I literally high-fived someone after we solved her email problem.</p> <p>In the same vein - live optimisation was such a winner.</p> <p>Interesting to see how many mobile emails there were.</p> <p>Is it responsive? yes it is!

As you may have seen, the beta for Mailbox for Mac was released a couple of days ago. We thought we'd do a few quick tests to see how it's rendering engine held up.

<h2> if you're split testing responsive vs.</h2> <p>non, and looking at clicks or opens, you're doing it wrong #emaildesign — Elliot Ross (@iamelliot) July 10, 2014 I watched a webinar yesterday where the presenter was strongly advocating doing a split test between a Responsive email vs.</p> <p>a Non-Responsive one (ideally the same email just sans-media queries) and I was reminded of a rant I half-wrote on my flight back from the Litmus Conference last year.</p> <p>There's still too many swear words in that, but nevertheless I still think this approach demonstrates a lack in understanding in the benefits of going responsive.</p> <p>Responsive email design is an experience thing.</p> <p>It's about making the experience for a user better when they're using a mobile device, and that's a very difficult thing to quantify using numbers.</p> <p>Any difference in opens, or clicks, can be down to so many things, that they're at best only a vague indicator.</p> <p>Even if you look at conversions, there's so many factors at play that it isn't a reliable statistic.The true measure of things like responsive design, is to gauge the user's comprehension of the message and how happy they are with the brand as a result — but whilst that's perhaps the ultimate aim in marketing, that's incredibly hard to put a number on.Incidentally, towards the end of my flight on that trip home, the flight attendants handed out free choc-ices to everyone.</p> <p>That wasn't part of the in-flight meal — that was long gone — so what was the return on investment on that? could you split test that and see who re-books another flight?

<p>We love email that’s been shown a bit of thought and care over here at ActionRocket HQ, and are especially excited to see the World Cup ideas arriving into the inbox.</p> <p>We were even happier when this little gem from Harvey Nichols came in.Behold with images blocked:</p> <p>It doesn’t look too bad with images on either!</p>

<p>Last week we went to the inaugural Completely Email conference in Central London.</p> <p>Speakers included Becs Rivett, Kirsty Trainer, Alex Ilhan, Mark Robbins and Tim Watson.</p> <h2> Here's some of the take aways:</h2> <p>On advanced coding techniques My in email game from #completelyemail http://t.co/DfGYWz7RqR have a play.</p> <p>It don't work in Outlook — Mark Robbins (@M_J_Robbins) June 5, 2014 Here is the SVG fallback code I mentioned earlier #completelyemail - http://t.co/cyUqu4E7dP — Mark Robbins (@M_J_Robbins) June 5, 2014 Great argument for progressive enhancement:</p> <p>make modern emails, email clients will catch up @M_J_Robbins #completelyemail — ActionRocket (@ActionRocket) June 5, 2014 this is why the email community is awesome - group code experiments #completelyemail @M_J_Robbins pic.twitter.com/9UDbnX6beU — ActionRocket (@ActionRocket) June 5, 2014 #completelyemail failing:</p> <p>the more you fail at email code, the better you get at it — ActionRocket (@ActionRocket) June 5, 2014 yes! "get over coding like it's 1998, code like it's 2014" @M_J_Robbins #completelyemail — ActionRocket (@ActionRocket) June 5, 2014 On testing and QA RT @iamacyborg :</p> <p>Always send internally, always too easy to make mistakes.</p> <p>Bad when those mistakes get sent to millions.</p> <p>#completelyemail — tfma_event (@tfma_event) June 6, 2014 #completelyemail testing:</p> <p>sign up for live accounts, get a few devices (here's ours http://t.co/GSKpeG7mjw ), get @litmusapp and @EmailonAcid — ActionRocket (@ActionRocket) June 5, 2014 #completelyemail when you write copy (and design tbh) leave it for a while, come back to it fresh and imagine being a recipient - @HennekeD — ActionRocket (@ActionRocket) June 5, 2014 On automation #completelyemail automation of your email systems can help scale things like segmentation and personalisation.</p> <p>Triggers help relevance — Simon Dunant (@NewRiseDigital) June 5, 2014 On images-off After hearing yesterday at #completelyemail that 45% of recipients don't turn on images I receive this email...</p> <p>pic.twitter.com/Qe3P41LbB8 — Kirsty Trainer (@KirstyTrainer) June 6, 2014 On web fonts in email Paul Airy thanks for making fonts sound sexy they are the main reason I have glasses for screen work.</p> <p>#completelyemail — Tom (@TomEd_Standing) June 5, 2014 I don't know where I heard it but if you have more than three fonts on a page you've got too many.</p> <p>Keep it neat and simple #completelyemail — Natalie Corner (@corner_natalie) June 5, 2014 Places to get web fonts for email:</p> <p>http://t.co/VmLtQXWUZH http://t.co/xA1pSnd2Sm https://t.co/gnLeRumf3J (free) #completelyemail — ActionRocket (@ActionRocket) June 5, 2014 #completelyemail cheers @becskr - here's a bit more about web fonts in email from us http://t.co/oFD1bKyGsY — ActionRocket (@ActionRocket) June 5, 2014 On Acquisition #completelyemail grow your list growth everywhere not just your website.</p> <p>Form partnerships for leverage — Simon Dunant (@NewRiseDigital) June 5, 2014 Make sure your popups don't annoy people, otherwise the data you gather will be worthless.</p> <p>#completelyemail pic.twitter.com/71ZkYEW5zK — Jacques Corby-Tuech (@iamacyborg) June 5, 2014 Wait until your site visitor is actually engaged before you hit them with the pop up & grow that list #completelyemail — Mike Ragan (@Mike_Ragan) June 5, 2014 People know their email address is valuable, on signup give people something back (like an offer) #completelyemail — ActionRocket (@ActionRocket) June 5, 2014 #completelyemail putting subscribe link in emails for people that get forwarded the email.</p> <p>Simple but brilliant advice from @KirstyTrainer — Matthew Lawrence (@mattjlawrence) June 5, 2014 "a huge signup form is like talking about baby names on the first date" awesome from Al @omgitsonlyalex #completelyemail — ActionRocket (@ActionRocket) June 5, 2014 On Mobile email Great to hear some realistic comments on responsive design.</p> <p>It isn't a necessity it's a possibility depending on audience.</p> <p>#completelyemail — Chris Goldson (@Chrisgoldson90) June 5, 2014 Surprised by the lack of love for responsive mobile emails today #IStillThinkItsAwesome #completelyemail — Sadie Arnold (@SadieAtGenie) June 5, 2014 Most people will browse on smartphone and then continue the process cross-device by purchasing on tablet and desktop #completelyemail — Russell Dawson (@rutdawson) June 5, 2014 "Responsive design/build is not the be all and end all." *sharpens the pitchfork of context* #completelyemail — Mike Ragan (@Mike_Ragan) June 5, 2014 On content "If content is king, then data builds the kingdom." Brilliant.</p> <p>#CompletelyEmail @tawatson — Natalie Rockall (@natrock) June 5, 2014 Avoid saying 'to those of you' in an email, like you're emailing a crowd.</p> <p>Emails should be personal #completelyemail — Amish Patel (@amish_patel06) June 5, 2014 Write for one person, not for a vague group #completelyemail — Jacques Corby-Tuech (@iamacyborg) June 5, 2014 On Social media Be careful with Facebook comps, lots of people spend their whole day applying to these, data won't be worth anything #completelyemail — Jacques Corby-Tuech (@iamacyborg) June 5, 2014 Interesting - you can share your email list with facebook(!) and then target/untarget fb ads based on that #completelyemail @tawatson — ActionRocket (@ActionRocket) June 5, 2014 On email being everywhere #completelyemail pic.twitter.com/NKS8i8MJ8v — Mark Robbins (@M_J_Robbins) June 5, 2014 At the pub Collated #completelyemail photos https://t.co/sgU0MNEzzu #click — Email Chic Geek (@EmailChicGeek) June 6, 2014</p>

Last week we sent our first #emailweekly newsletter, which replaces our old feedburner email alert that auto-sent when we'd written a new blog post. Now, being a blog about email design, we were never really happy with how the old emails looked, but at the time it did a job and we had more pressing things to do.

<p>When you visit a supermarket in the UK, one of the first things you have to do is give a pound coin deposit before you can get hold of a shopping trolley (sorry, cart).</p> <p>It is an awful way to start a customer relationship.</p> <h2> It says “Welcome to our store.</h2> <p>Even though you are going to spend hundreds of pounds with us, we have no trust in you whatsoever”.</p> <p>It is an inconvenience, but because every company does it, it becomes accepted.</p> <p>1 A deliberately confusing email opt-in is much the same thing.This week Sky News producer Roddy Mansfield took UK retailer John Lewis/Waitrose to task for pre-ticking an email signup checkbox as part of their online registration (a “soft opt-in”), with a county-court deciding that this did not indicate permission.</p> <p>Subsequently the DMA published a piece highlighting that Mansfield’s employer themselves engage in arguably worse practices, that legally the case does not set a precedent, and that the brand likely preferred to settle rather than take the issue further.This may be true, but our benchmark for acceptable practices should not just be what we can legally get away with.</p> <p>When users call marketing email spam, it is because they do not expect or want it, regardless of any legal permission.</p> <p>Our approach to acquisition should not be based on deception — for many brands, a user’s being a part of the email audience has great benefits, and that is what we should be highlighting when we want people to join.All our talk of relevance, preference centres, and giving users control means nothing if we start the conversation by deceiving people.</p> <p>1 As an aside, this doesn't even solve the problem.</p> <p>If someone really wanted to steal the trolley, they'd just put a pound in, or jam the lock.</p>

<p>I've not seen many campaigns like this, so thought it'd be a good share.</p> <p>This email from software house Realmac is almost entirely about unsubscribing - giving people who aren't interested in receiving future emails a chance to opt out, and in the process tidying up their list.</p> <p>I'm not sure if they did any data behind this, but this is the kind of thing that could be sent to an unengaged segment, as part of a larger strategy.</p>

<p>There's currently a series of tube strikes in London over the next few weeks, and as ever, some brands have been canny in using it as a subject for email campaigns.</p> <h2> Here's a few examples we found:</h2> <p>Uber pointed out that they're a great alternative, and provided a special new customer offer:</p> <p>Café Rouge invited everyone around for lunch:</p> <h2> ...</h2> <p>and stopping short of a dedicated campaign, Expedia added a quick note to their header:</p> <h2> Bonus:</h2> <p>here's a Pizza Express campaign from earlier in the year:</p> <p>timely bit of #emailmarketing from Pizza Express today #tubestrike #emaildesign pic.twitter.com/ltzyyhaY8f — Elliot Ross (@iamelliot) February 5, 2014</p>

<p>Rumour has it that Google are experimenting with adding a snooze button to the mobile Gmail app.</p> <p>According to Geek.com , a snooze button would allow users to effectively save their email for later.</p> <p>Your emails can also be Snoozed in this new UI.</p> <p>Snoozing an email means it appears as read until the timer goes off, when it will then float to the top of your Inbox as an unread email.</p> <p>You can choose to snooze an email for a couple of hours or several weeks depending on your need, and you can snooze messages over and over again if you choose to The meteoric rise in mobile email use has seen users dipping into their inbox more frequently, however sometimes the mobile experience of a brand's email and website can impede conversion on a smaller screen.</p> <p>Something like this could potentially drive users to re-open emails later on, once they're in a more convenient setting.</p> <p>Even though we've seen users don't currently triage their email in any great number, an innovation along these lines could encourage this behaviour.Of course, there's no guarantee that this feature will make it out into the wild, and even then it remains to be seen if it would have any real effect on users' behaviour.</p> <p> But this could change the game. again.</p>

<p>Here at the ActionRocket studio we've been experimenting with some Internet of Things type gadgets, most recently with our internet connected bus stop sign .</p> <p>One of the things that's intriguing about this is how this kind of logic can be added to email — what if something that happens in an email can cause an effect on something in the real world? (and vice versa) Of course interactivity in email has traditionally been hindered by blanket non-support of Javascript, but some marketers and brands are starting to do exciting things beyond the standard "drive to the web" call to action.Here's a few examples:</p> <h2> Sky:</h2> <p>Record a TV show Sky allow customers to set a show to record directly from their helpful "what's on" email.</p> <h2> Capital Radio:</h2> <p>Call the Studio Clicking on the CTA buttons here takes you directly to the call or sms apps on your phone (there's a bit more about this functionality here ) Fitbit:</p> <p>Charge your device This helpful email appears once your Fitbit activity tracker runs low on battery.</p> <p>How do these work?

<p>We've talked before about making the experience better for users with images turned off , but it's still something that is frequently missed by email coders.</p> <p>This example from McDonald's includes a few best-practice techniques, such as styling Alt-text and clever use of background colour, plus also throws in a bonus piece of burger pixel-art.</p> <h2> Delicious.</h2> <p>Here's the email with images turned back on:</p>

Much has been made of Google's previous efforts to split the Gmail inbox into different tabs. In their first incarnation, messages were sorted into either Primary, Social, Updates or Promotions sections based on their content.

<p>Whether you are a designer, marketer, just starting out or have been in the email industry for multiple years, the Modern HTML Email guide is for you.</p> <p>Author, Jason Rodriguez , has compiled lessons he has learnt throughout his impressive career and has thankfully (you will be thankful) passed them on.Available in print and digital, the guide walks through everything from marketing basics to advance HTML techniques, teaching you how to design an email from the ground up.</p> <p>He even goes as far as to include responsive techniques and a sample so you can see the examples in action.All in all, a guide thoroughly recommended by the team here at Action Rocket.</p> <p>To download a free sample or to get more information, go over to Modern HTML Email now.</p>

<p>San Fransico, London and Boston will be hosting Litmus' email marketing based conferences this year .</p> <p>With dates in September through to November, it will be bringing together speakers from various agencies and brands who have blazed trails for the industry.</p> <p>It's bound to be an insightful experience as well as the following:</p> <p>Meet fellow email professionals Network with industry experts Get inspired by tons of real-world examples Gain actionable takeaways to take back to the office Discover industry trends and best practices Speaker sneak-peak...</p> <p>For more information and to purchase your tickets click here .</p>

<p>Update - you might want to be in the Promotions tab after all - here's why .</p> <p>A popular topic amongst marketers at the moment is the most recent curveball from Google:</p> <h2> Gmail tabs.</h2> <p>It is still early days and it will be interesting to see what the long-term effects will be for email marketers.For brands that already have a loyal audience of openers and converters, I can imagine it won't be too hard for them to compete in the promotional tab or even be moved over to join the primary, personal emails of their users.</p> <p>So which brands are trying their luck? Take a look at some of the examples we've seen of brand responses - and remember, if you don't ask, you don't get...</p> <p>Kate Spade Saturday Mr Porter The Outnet More examples below from Jordie van Rijn Gilt Hanes</p>

<p>Mobile sites that offer services would be smart to host a click-to-call link on their homepage for users to easily get in contact and make an enquiry - especially if that is their primary communication channel for customers (Gladstone Brookes example below).</p> <p>The reason for this is it's simple, easy, convenient and 'no fuss' for the user.</p> <p>Bringing this element to email offers the opportunity to personalise and prompt users to interact and has the potential to maximise engagement and conversions.</p> <p>The below example from the Capital FM welcome email lets you text or call in on the breakfast show straight from the email.</p> <p>RUSH used this method, combined with a promotional offer and code, in a recent email (see below).</p> <p>The number is also personalised to the branch that I have a purchase history with;</p> <p>for similar companies it would be important for user data to be up to date for this to work effectively.</p> <h2> Still, a very good use of click-to-call. Get involved.</h2> <p>Have any examples you've received and would like to share?

<p>Here's the slides from a talk I did last week at the European leg of Silverpop's Amplify conference.</p> <p>It's a quick look at the different options and opportunities for mobile email design, from some easy wins to completely re-thinking how we approach design.I'm speaking at a few conferences later this year, sign up for the ActionRocket newsletter and we'll get the details out in due course.</p>

<p>If you are like me and struggle every year with what to get your Dad, then one of these emails might inspire you just in time.</p> <p>Father's day falls on Sunday the 16th this year (if you'd forgotten) and socks, gimmicky gadgets and random kitchen utensils may not cut it for the fourth year in a row.</p> <p>The following emails prompted me to look in places that wouldn't have crossed my mind otherwise.</p> <p>Here are some campaign clippings I have received this week, one of which got themselves a cheeky conversion.</p> <h2> Subject line:</h2> <p>'Give your dad the world this Father's Day! Get a £50 Gift Card for only £30‏' Subject line:</p> <h2> 'Father's day:</h2> <p>Gourmet membership + free gift for just £29.95‏' Subject line:</p> <p>'Don't forget Father's Day!

<p>Here's the first example of Twitter's new email sign up cards I've seen in the wild - quite appropriately for Mailchimp.</p>

<p>Nowadays, my email inbox tends to contain irrelevant offers so it's refreshing to receive one now and again that is useful, relevant and easy to redeem.</p> <p>An example of this is this tactically distributed email from Pizza Express which arrived in my inbox just before lunch time.</p> <p>Let's face it, the offer is a pretty good one and ideal for lunch meetings or friendly catch-ups;</p> <p>the timing couldn't have been a coincidence.With the mission to get customers offline and in store, it didn't hurt that it renders well on mobile devices too with its limited large bold text and high quality images.</p> <p>The design is simple and renders quickly on a mobile which is ideal if having to retrieve the code in a restaurant.</p> <p>Top marks for user experience (and the food wasn't too bad either!).</p>

<p>A tool that should be in every email designer's toolbox:</p> <h2> Litmus Scope.</h2> <p>Sharing email campaigns and code is no longer a difficult task between your team as this tool allows you to instantly capture and forward campaigns using the bookmarklet or app .In a single click you are able to create previews of campaigns, mobile or desktop and share with your colleagues without the email breaking or having to spend time taking screen shots.</p> <p>Take a look at how the service works here:[vimeo 65653472 w=500 h=281] Introducing Litmus Scope! from Travis Wilber on Vimeo .This free to use service is available via Gmail in the browser, or as a Mac app.</p> <p>However, Litmus have hinted this will be extended to other mail services in future.</p> <p> Watch this space.</p>

<p>Twitter have just announced the ability to add an email signup form to a promoted tweet, using the new Lead Generation Twitter Card.</p> <p>Aside from being able to add text to the tweet, you can also add an image, some call to action text and the signup form itself.The form is pre-populated with the email address the user signed up to Twitter with.</p> <p>In addition to the user's name and email address, their twitter username is also submitted - so if your ESP is capable it means you could start to do some clever analytics based on the user's twitter feed.Google have dabbled with this, allowing email signup via adwords in the search results.</p> <p>Some of our clients use that and it works well for them, the challenge then becomes to get more data out of the subscriber, such as name, gender, location etc.More on TNW & the Twitter Blog .</p>

<p>Google have announced a new selection of features that allow email marketers to add interactivity to email campaigns via the Gmail interface.</p> <p>It means that we can mark up information such as event details or a travel itinerary in the HTML header of an email campaign, and which will then allow actions to be integrated into other Google services, such as the Google Now app.</p> <p>It's an interesting move as it could lead to a much more open standard for transferring actions from email campaigns into other places, like web and mobile apps.</p> <p>In the past we've had a few aborted attempts to add this kind of functionality to email clients - Hotmail smart mail was one - but they've all been siloed on one platform.Using a schema.org style standard means that there's potential for the same code to be used by other email apps.</p> <p>On the web, schema.org is used as a shared standard between Yahoo, Google and other search engines as a common standard to mark up content and add search functionality.However it should be noted that these actions are for transactional, relevant emails - not bulk marketing messages.</p> <p>You'll need to register your sending email address to use this, with one of the conditions being "Actions should be used for transactional mail where a high interaction rate is expected.</p> <p>They should not be used on promotional bulk mail." Actions There are currently two types of actions, but there are more rumoured and in sandboxing:</p> <p>Gmail actions, such as replying to meeting requests, adding reviews - these are simple actions that can be added to the email interface.</p> <p>Goto actions, which are more complex - these add a call to action button to the inbox and subject line, which then link to a page where the action can be performed (eg.</p> <p>check in) Image via Google Examples of the code Note that this code is still going through the process of standardisation, so isn't live code, but it shows how this information will be marked up in an email campaign:</p> <p><html>  <head>    <script type="application/ld+json">    {      "@context":</p> <h2>             "schema.org",      "@type":</h2> <p>               "EventReservation",      "reservationNumber":</p> <h2>    "IO12345",      "underName": "John Smith",      "reservationFor": {        "@type": "Event",        "name":</h2> <p>              "Google I/O 2013",        "startDate":</p> <p>         "2013-05-15T08:30-08:00",        "location":</p> <p>          "Moscone Center, 800 Howard St., San Francisco, CA 94103"      }    }    </script>  </head> As this is added as a json script in the header section of the html, it will be ignored by other email clients with no detrimental effects.</p> <p>You can read more about schema code for email on the Google Developers site.</p>

<p>This takes two minutes and is totally worth it - register your sending address with Gravatar , add a profile picture, and certain email clients will add the icon next to your emails in the inbox.</p> <p>A quick test shows that it's supported in Sparrow - which has quite a high takeup amongst designers and mac users - and also Postbox app .</p> <p>We'll take a look at support elsewhere and add an update.</p>

<p>I've noticed quite a bit of discussion around use of responsive design in email , particularly whether it's worth investing the time and therefore money, and if it does indeed drive results (Sidebar:</p> <p>I can't share specifics, but the stats my clients have shared show it does).</p> <p>I think that it's a no-brainer to look at providing a better experience for those users opening your emails on a mobile device.</p> <p>In fact, personally I find it a bit weird that we need stats before we think about this, but there we go.But when it comes to mobile optimisation, responsive design is only part of the solution - and we need to make sure that marketers don't implement responsive design in a way that doesn't really work, get their fingers burned and then never try again.</p> <p>Much in the same way that social share buttons were declared "never to work", when they were mostly implemented by shoving some social media icons in the footer and blindly hoping for the best.Here's what I think we should do to improve the mobile experience:</p> <p>Design the "desktop" version so it can work on a mobile device Responsive design isn't supported everywhere, notably Gmail app on Android, which is probably a large amount of people who will miss out.</p> <p>If you send those people an over complicated design, laden with content, it's not going to work on a small screen.</p> <p>We need to design something that works ok without responsive - so cut down copy, don't have a crazy layout, make everything nice and modular.</p> <p>Maybe bump the text size up a bit, and make buttons nice and easy to touch.We often see emails that have too much content, usually due to multiple stakeholders all trying to get their 5 seconds screen time.</p> <p>This is our perfect argument against this practice.</p> <p>Get rid of the endless paragraphs and make something that's easy to scan, and you'll end up with a campaign that has a stronger, clearer message.A more straightforward design has the added benefit of being easier to "make responsive".</p> <p>So why bother with responsive? Well, you could just leave it there.</p> <p>The chances are your mobile friendlier, but 600px wide email, will still be ok zoomed out on an iPhone.</p> <p>In fact, if budget/time is that much of an issue, you could do this and see how the results look.</p> <p>Use responsive design as an extra layer of enhancement There's a large amount of users ( pretty much everyone except Gmail app and the remaining Blackberry users) that we can enhance the experience further for.</p> <p>We can optimise the layout - doing things like stacking content into one column - and make buttons easier to select and text easier to read.</p> <p>If we can make it even easier for these users to comprehend the message and then act on it, it stands to reason that it'll help with results.Overall - It's a few hours extra time in html, for a marked improvement for a significant amount of people on your list.</p> <p>And the amount of users that will benefit from it is increasing all the time.</p> <p>But if you're unsure about going all out responsive just yet, then perhaps designing your "desktop" email to be more mobile friendly is a happy compromise in the mean time.</p>

My tutorial on designing and coding responsive html emails, so the design and layout adapts automatically on mobile devices and tablets, is in the September 2012 issue of .net magazine - issue 232.

<p>In amongst all the new macbooks and iOS 6 features at today's WWDC keynote were a few updates to the native email client, mail.app.</p> <p>Of most interest to email marketers is the VIP inbox, which is a separate inbox containing only emails from people (or brands) that you 'really want to be notified about'.</p> <p>It's another step towards the 'smart inbox' which pre-sorts a user's emails, although unlike Gmail's Priority Inbox and Hotmail's inbox, senders are starred manually by the user.</p> <p>In the regular inbox emails from these users are also marked with a star:</p> <p>Starred emails also receive prominence in the notification centre and locked screen:</p> <p>There's also the ability to 'flag' an individual email, which users may or may not use to save emails they'd like to act upon later.Elsewhere there's the long awaited ability to have different signatures for different email accounts, and a twitter-esque pull down to update action on the inbox.iOS6 is scheduled to be released later this year.Photos via Verge Live Blog</p>

<p>The shift to mobile represents a huge challenge to email design.</p> <p>We know that more and more users are checking emails on smart phones and tablets, but currently our approach has largely been to make our current designs work as best we can for these users.In the past we've sectioned off people who check their email on mobile devices, and treated them differently, sending them their own special, slimmed down HTML.</p> <h2> We can't do that any more.</h2> <p>Users flip between mobiles, desktops and tablets, checking the same email account on each device, so we need to make campaigns that work well for every platform.If we're going to do it right, we need to do more than just make a token effort - we need to rethink the way we approach email design.</p> <p>Looking to the web There are two approaches currently being used on the web that help create platform agnostic pages, and we can learn from these when creating similar email campaigns:</p> <p>Mobile First You may already have read Luke Wroblewski's compelling arguments for designing first for the mobile, then for the desktop.</p> <p>If not - then read up here , and ideally pick up the excellent A Book Apart book here .</p> <p>The most interesting argument here is that mobile forces you to focus.</p> <p>If you design and write first for the constraints of mobile, you'll find a campaign that works there will also work on larger platforms.</p> <p>Then we can add an extra layer that enhances the experience for tablet and desktop users.</p> <p>Responsive Design Responsive Design is an approach used on the web to create websites that adapt their layout and design for the viewing device.</p> <p>It's not creating a separate mobile version, it's making one piece of HTML that adapts for multiple platforms.We'll look at how to code responsive emails soon, but until then lets look at the considerations to make a campaign that works for mobile devices.</p> <p>Designing for all platforms Make the message clear Make your message succinct, clear and easy to action, and it'll work both on mobiles and desktops.</p> <p>In the past we've seen plenty of desktop campaigns packed full with long form copy.</p> <p>We need to cut out the waffle, and make it easy and quick to read.It's possible with CSS to remove some of your desktop content on a mobile device, but we should only be using this for tweaking design elements, not editing the message.</p> <p>If you can't get your message across in a 320px wide mobile device, it's hard to see how adding loads of extra content for desktop users will solve this.</p> <p>Design for a touch screen The majority of smart phones are touch screen, and therefore users are selecting links using their fingers and not a mouse.</p> <p>Having measured a vast array of thumbs and fingers, Apple's human interface guidelines state that the minimum size for a click-able area should be 22x44px.</p> <p>This means you should make (at least) the main call to action links nice and large, and easy to select on a touchscreen.</p> <p>You should also ensure that links are spaced out so they aren't mis-tapped - a minimum of 22px again is advisable.Remember that whilst you may or may not consider the iPad a mobile device, it does still have a touch screen.</p> <p>Design for the screen size The portrait iPhone screen size is 320 pixels wide, whilst most desktop emails are currently 600 to 700px.</p> <p>We want something that works in both - so if you don't go down the responsive route, this means shrinking the amount of copy, then making the text size larger.</p> <p>iPhones will automatically resize body copy so it's legible, so that already helps, but you need to make sure that the larger text doesn't then break your design (this often happens on buttons and nav menus).A simple way to consider small-screen design is to make your design one column, with full width images.</p> <p>This will automatically shrink down pretty well, and minimizes any issues from text being resized.</p> <p>This campaign from Solo is a good example.At the very least, we should ensure that text and call to action buttons are legible on the small screen.</p> <p>Don't make mobile assumptions It's easy to assume that because people are using a small screen device, they're on the move.</p> <p>All we can really tell is their screen size, so they're just as likely to be sitting on their sofa.</p> <p>Whilst we have the technology to detect a device and it's screen size, we should avoid explicitly changing the content to be "mobile specific".</p> <p>Think about the customer journey It's important to get the email right, as it's often the first step in a longer journey, but we also need to think about where the user goes next.</p> <p>Once they've clicked on from the email, is the landing page optimised for smaller screens? is it easy or even appropriate for your users to convert via a mobile handset?

<p>Behavioural retargetting is a technology that's recently been popularised on the web - it's the process of targeting users via banner ad networks after they've visited a brand's site, with an aim to get them to return and convert.This triggered campaign from UK retailer John Lewis uses this methodology in email.</p> <p>I received the email a few hours after browsing the John Lewis site for iPad accessories, reminding me to go back to the site and providing more reasons to shop with them.As with the retargetting ads online, it's easy to go overboard with this kind of thing, so it's important to pay attention to the tone of voice of the message.</p> <p>John Lewis do a good job here, gently reminding the user why they're receiving the email but not being too pushy.</p>

<p>Earlier today on Twitter, Chad White over at Retail Email Blog posted this great campaign that breaks the rules, but in doing so stands out from the crowd.</p> <p>The Brooks Brothers email features a huge stack of polo shirts, in every colour under the sun.</p> <p>Much like the water slide email we saw a few years ago, it's very long and against the usual 'best practice', but in breaking the rules it communicates the breadth of the product range.It also shows why we need to change our approach to " the fold " - instead of filling the top area with product details and buttons, there's something that engages the user and entices them to scroll down, eventually finding the call to action buttons at the bottom.</p> <p>Wonderful email from @ BrooksBrothers today:</p> <h2> The $2,000 Polo...</h2> <p>yfrog.com/nzps7yoj — Chad White (@RetailEmailBlog) April 16, 2012</p>

<p>Cross-promo campaigns are often a challenge for email marketers to get right - when a campaign is sent to a brand's list talking about a deal or collaboration with another brand.</p> <p>Commercially they often make sense - and when featuring a complimentary brand, can offer good value to the user.</p> <p>However, it's quite easy to make these look like spam, especially if it's unclear that the user is receiving the email about Brand B because they're on Brand A's list.This campaign from UK restaurant chain Giraffe is a good example of a cross-promo campaign done well.</p> <h2> There's a few reasons why it works:</h2> <p>The creative clearly shows why I'm receiving this - I'm on Giraffe's list and their brand is still there in the campaign.</p> <p>Go Ape is complimentary to the Giraffe brand - it's something that also appeals to their demographic and the offer is a good fit.</p> <p>There's a nice synergy between two animal/nature based brands that is used to good effect in the copy.</p> <p>Additionally this is a good example of using email and social media together - sending a campaign to launch a competition on Twitter and Facebook.</p>

<p>This campaign from online fashion retailer ASOS uses old school ASCII text illustrations to add a quirky element to the design.</p> <p>As these illustrations are made using text characters, these also show when images are disabled.</p> <p>Here's how the design holds up with images turned off:</p>

<p>Examples of permission-updating emails are few and far between.</p> <p>They're what you should use in an ideal world when you do things like change the frequency or content of your email campaigns - to communicate to your list that from now on they're getting something different and if they don't want that then there's an opportunity to opt out.</p> <p>Design Taxi are doing this currently as they're merging a few lists into one larger campaign.</p> <p>They've done this by sending a campaign that has a very different visual treatment to their normal campaigns, and have used some quirky but on brand copy to highlight what you'll be missing out on if you unsubscribe.</p>

Often in marketing emails we need to apply caveats to pieces of copy, linking to terms and conditions below or on a separate page1.

<p>Fully functional video in email has always been a bit of a holy grail for email marketers.</p> <p>There's been several close-but-no-cigar moments, including using large animated gifs or using proprietary javascript plugins.</p> <p>These have been good as far as they go, but there's always been drawbacks in terms of support or functionality.But thanks to increased support for HTML5 in email clients, combined with the rise in popularity of HTML5 supporting smartphones like the iPhone and Android platforms, fully playable email video is becoming a viable proposition.There's plenty of reason to use video - it can be really effective in communicating a complex marketing message, and can really help demonstrate ideas and inspire to your audience.</p> <p>And there's plenty of real world uses - for example to show off a travel resort, to demonstrate the features of a product, or to provide help tutorials post-purchase.I've used video on several campaigns and found it really effective in driving engagement and click-throughs.</p> <p>On some campaigns we've also combined it with a share-with-your-network button to encourage users to share the video on Twitter and Facebook.Whilst video can be successful, it's always important to ensure that the video is there for a reason - it needs to be supporting a clear creative message or proposition, and not just there because we can do it .</p> <p>Where is HTML5 video supported in Email? The good news is HTML5 video is supported on mobile devices like iPhone, iPad and some Android devices, plus on the desktop Apple Mail and Hotmail.</p> <p>It also plays fully when the hosted version of a campaign is viewed in Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Internet Explorer (9 and above).And when it's not supported (Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo!

<p>outlook-background Note - this is an improved fix over our previous Outlook background fix This fix is something I've been looking at for a while - and allows html emails to display a full page background image in both outlook 2007 and webmail clients, and for the background image to degrade to a background colour when images are disabled.Whilst you can use the <body> tag to successfully specify a full page background image in Outlook, many webmail clients will ignore this.</p> <p>This has often meant that both background images and colour are also specified using a full width table, to ensure support in webmail clients.One issue that occurs from this technique, however, is that Outlook will also render the background colour from that full width table, but not the background image, meaning that the solid background colour will display above any full page background image specified on the <body> tag in Outlook.This fix allows you so specify a full width background image that displays in both Outlook and webmail clients , and will fall back to a solid background colour when viewed in any email client with images disabled.Full Snippet:</p> <p><html><head><!--add Hotmail fixes, background colour in Hotmail is specificed on .ExternalClass--><style type="text/css">.ReadMsgBody {width:</p> <h2> 100%;}.ExternalClass {width:</h2> <p>100%;}</style></head><!--this specifies the background colour for webmail clients that don't recognise the body tag--><div style="background:#EDEDED;"><!--this specifies the background image and colour in Outlook & other desktop email clients--><body style="padding:0;</p> <p>margin:0;" background="http://www.emaildesignreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/background-fix.gif" bgcolor="#EDEDED"><!--100% wrap table applies the background image in webmail clients--><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%" height="100%"><tr><td align="center" valign="top" background="http://www.emaildesignreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/background-fix.gif"><!--content goes here--></td></tr></table><!-- / 100% wrap table--></body></div></html> Download this code snippet Essentially what's happening here is we're wrapping the <body> tag in a <div> tag that has a background colour.</p> <p>So our content is wrapped in the following elements:</p> <p><div background:#ededed;> This sets the background for webmail clients when images are disabled <body background="http://www.emaildesignreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/background-fix.gif" bgcolor="#ededed"> This sets the background image and colour for Outlook 2007 and other desktop clients.</p> <p>Note that the best control we have over this background image is that it will tile from the top left - more advanced CSS background controls, like background-position or background-repeat aren't supported.</p> <p><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%" height="100%"><tr><td align="center" valign="top" background="http://www.emaildesignreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/background-fix.gif"><!--content goes here--></td></tr></table> Finally a full width table allows us to specify a background image that is supported in webmail clients.</p> <p>Note that adding a background colour to this table will mean that in Outlook 2007, the background colour will show over the background image.So now you should be all set - we've tested this in the major email clients, including Outlook, Gmail, Firefox and Yahoo - if you find any tweaks or use this please let us know below in the comments!</p>

<p>Coding for email can be, politely put, a somewhat specialist job.</p> <p>In addition to the different browser standards that web designers have to face, the various webmail clients can behave differently within those browsers, and then there's the well documented issues with desktop clients like Outlook 2007 and Lotus Notes.</p> <p>So with that in mind, we've compiled a list of some of our favourite resources to help you get through the html build process as smoothly as possible.</p> <p>If you use any of these, or indeed have any suggestions, please let us know in the comments.</p> <p>HTML Email Boiler Plate html-email-boilerplate The HTML Boiler Plate makes a perfect starting point when coding html - it features many of the common email code fixes and is a good base template.</p> <p>The feedback section on the site is also good for tips and bug fixes.</p> <p>http://htmlemailboilerplate.com Campaign Monitor's CSS Cheatsheet campaignmonitor-css This frequently updated resource is invaluable when coding HTML - it lists support for different CSS declarations, properties and selectors across the major email clients.</p> <p>It's available online, as a spreadsheet and as a pdf, so you can stick it on your wall if that's your kind of thing (and don't pretend it isn't).</p> <p>www.campaignmonitor.com/css Word to Clean HTML Converter As you've probably already found out, when a client supplies you copy for an email in a Microsoft Word document, it's filled with non-standard characters and general HTML-unfriendlyness - non-ASCII characters and extra spaces being just two of these.</p> <p>This simple app strips anything bad from your word documents, and makes it ready for dropping into your HTML.</p> <p>http://www.word2cleanhtml.com Fractal fractal Fractal is the closest email has to a validation tool - it'll fix known code issues, make your CSS inline for you and validate your code for the major email clients.</p> <p>In addition, all your campaigns are held together in a nice, easy to use interface.</p> <p>http://getfractal.com Premailer Premailer performs some pre-flight checks over your email code, and does a fair bunch of HTML magic, including making css inline, making relative urls absolute, creating a text version, removing unwanted comments, classes & IDs, and appending tracking code to links.</p> <h2> phew! http://premailer.dialect.ca Bonus:</h2> <p>Litmus Whilst you have to pay for it, Litmus is a lifesaver so we thought we'd add it anyway.</p> <p>Essentially, it shows you screenshots of how your email will render in all the major email clients, and gives your content the once over to make sure it doesn't look too spammy.</p> <p>After you've sent your campaign, it can also provide you with a pretty extensive set of analysis, giving you some feedback to incorporate into your next campaign.</p> <p> http://litmus.com</p>

<p>outlook-background Note - we now have a better fix for this issue, which we recommend over the below fix.</p> <p>We've kept the content on this page for reference only.</p> <p>Since Outlook 2007 was released, support for background images in email has been problematic.</p> <p>Whilst you can use the <body> tag to successfully specify a full page background image in Outlook, many webmail clients will ignore this.</p> <p>This has often meant that both background images and colour are also specified using a full width table, to ensure support in webmail clients.</p> <p>One issue that occurs from this technique, however, is that Outlook will also render the background colour from that full width table, but not the background image, meaning that the solid background colour will display above any full page background image specified on the <body> tag in Outlook.This fix allows you so specify a full width background image that displays in both Outlook and webmail clients , and will fall back to a solid background colour when viewed in any email client with images disabled.</p> <h2> Full Snippet:</h2> <p><html><head><!--add Hotmail fixes, background colour in Hotmail is specificed on .ExternalClass--><style type="text/css">.ReadMsgBody {width:</p> <h2> 100%;}.ExternalClass {width: 100%;</h2> <p>background-color:#EDEDED !important;}</style><!--this turns off the 100% table background colour in Outlook--><!–[if gte mso 9]><style> .bgemailfix{background-color:transparent !important;}</style><![endif]–></head><!--this specifies the background image and colour in Outlook & other desktop email clients--><body style="padding:0;</p> <p>margin:0;" background="http://www.emaildesignreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/background-fix.gif" bgcolor="#EDEDED"><!--100% wrap table applies the background colour and background in webmail clients--><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%" height="100%"><tr><td align="center" valign="top" class="bgemailfix" style="background-color:#EDEDED;" background="http://www.emaildesignreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/background-fix.gif"><!--content goes here--></td></tr></table><!-- / 100% wrap table--></body></html> Download this code snippet So what's happening here:</p> <p>Using the <body> tag, we can specify a background image and colour that is supported in Outlook:</p> <h2> <body style="padding:0;</h2> <p>margin:0;"background="http://www.emaildesignreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/background-fix.gif"bgcolor="#EDEDED"> Note that we can't set CSS properties like repeat or position on this background image - the image will tile from the top left corner of the email.</p> <p>Note that also Outlook will add a 15px page margin, that cannot be removed.For all other email clients, they will ignore the <body> background, so there is a 100% table with this info:</p> <p><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%" height="100%"><tr><td align="center" valign="top"style="background-color:#EDEDED;"background="http://www.emaildesignreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/background-fix.gif"><!--content goes here--></td></tr></table> We have to declare the background image using background=”” so it’s supported in Gmail.However, Outlook will pick up the background colour from this and display it over the background image specified in <body>, therefore at the top of the email we need to apply a conditional statement to tell outlook to ignore the bgcolor:</p> <p><!–[if gte mso 9]><style> .bgemailfix{background-color:transparent !important;}</style><![endif]–> However, just to add to the fun – Hotmail also picks up that conditional statement (something to do with displaying content from Word properly in email), and so this code will also disable the bgcolor in Hotmail – so we need to add an additional fix to our existing Hotmail style fix , which adds a background colour to the <div> that Hotmail wraps the email in:</p> <p><style type="text/css">.ReadMsgBody {width:</p> <h2> 100%;}.ExternalClass {width: 100%;</h2> <p>background-color:#EDEDED !important;}</style> To implement this you will need to update the page background hex code in three locations in the snippet above:</p> <p>#EDEDED ...and update the background image URL in two locations:</p> <p>http://www.emaildesignreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/background-fix.gif So now you should be all set - we've tested this in the major email clients, including Outlook, Gmail, Firefox and Yahoo - if you find any tweaks or use this please let us know below in the comments!</p>

With a joined up strategy, the channels can support each other and become more than the sum of their parts. With that in mind, more ‘traditional’ email marketing should be adapted to complement social marketing. Here’s my five tips on how to do just that.

<p>Here's a bit of code that's been floating around for ages (I think it first surfaced on Campaign Monitor's Blog ).So essentially what this does is it allows a piece of content to be hidden from display in Outlook 2007, but display everywhere else.</p> <p>This could be used, for example, to hide a form element (forms don't work in Outlook, but do everywhere else) and display something else instead.</p> <p>Essentially what's happening is there's a bit of css telling anything with the class .nooutlook not to display, and then the conditional statement hides that bit of CSS from everything except Outlook 07.</p> <p><!--[if gte mso 9]><style> // This CSS will only be seen in Outlook 2007.nooutlook </style><![endif]--><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="20" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" class="nooutlook"><tr><td>This content displays everywhere except Outlook 2007</td></tr></table><table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="20" bgcolor="#CCCCCC"><tr><td>This content displays everywhere</td></tr></table> Give it a go and let us know if you have any issues using it!</p>

<p>Change of address emails are often sent when a company moves to a new email marketing provider, mainly in order to improve deliverability.</p> <p>Their purpose is two fold - the core message is for the user to add the new sending email address to their address book, whilst behind the scenes, sending a low-impact message message like this helps improve the deliverability reputation of the new sender (a process commonly referred to as IP Warming).</p> <p>These steps combined help ensure the campaigns are sent to the inbox and not the trash or spam folders.Examples of these types of campaigns are often difficult to come by, but this example from UK hardware store Wickes serves as an example of some best practices.</p> <p>The overall shell of the email is on brand and will likely follow through to the upcoming marketing emails, with a prominent logo, navigation and links to social activity.</p> <p>The primary content is the instruction to add the sending email to the user's address book, with detailed instructions for the popular email clients.</p> <p>Underneath there is a limited amount of sales based content, which is something that's often missed in these campaigns.</p> <p>Whilst the key message should still be to update the address book email, sales content can still take secondary place - there's a good balance here.</p>

<p>Mobile email is the hot topic at the moment - it got a lot of discussion at both the EEC and Marketing Sherpa conferences, and hardly a week goes by without a set of blog posts and statistics getting released.</p> <p>comScore’s November 2010 report highlighted that over 70 million US users access email through a mobile device, and more than half of those do so on a daily basis.</p> <p>Other sites consistently report around 15-20% of opens being from mobile devices, with 7-10% being from the iPhone.So the fact is that emails are increasingly been opened on mobile devices, and this presents us with a new set of challenges and opportunities.</p> <p>There’s been various ways to overcome the mobile email challenge, and as technology both in email and on mobile devices has evolved over the last few years, we’ve been able to offer more sophisticated solutions.</p> <p>In the past, we may have simply added a ‘mobile version’ hosted link, which typically linked to the text version.</p> <p>This worked at the time, and continues to be a simple solution for those with less budget, but there's much more we can do now.Using some intelligent data analysis, most email service providers can now find out exactly which mobile device a user opens each of our emails on - which means we can build up a nice profile of who’s consistently using a mobile device for every email, who’s using a mixture of mobile and desktop and so on.</p> <p>Once we have this information, we can then put them into a data group and think about how we can talk to them better.</p> <h2> Case Study:</h2> <p>British Airways British Airways used smartphone optimised email marketing campaigns to promote their suite of mobile apps.</p> <p>Using analysis of previous email campaigns, we were able to find which users used Blackberries, Android devices and iPhones, and send them an email campaign that was relevant.Mobile rendering concerns meant that specific design and code techniques were used for the mobile-only versions, and the content was tailored, so for example users of Blackberry devices received information about the Blackberry app.</p> <p>A 'desktop' version was also built and linked from the email, for users who, despite having opened consistently on a mobile device, might this time be opening their email on a desktop.As a result of tailoring the experience for the user's device, the campaign exceeded the client's objectives - resulting in more than 60,000 downloads.</p> <p>For e-mails targeting iPhone users, open and click-through rates exceeded 50 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.</p> <p>So we can isolate people that we know view their emails on a mobile device, but what’s in the way of us optimising their experience? The Rendering Challenges There's three key differences between smartphones and desktops - the screen is smaller, interactions are made using a touch screen and the device is more likely to have disruptions connecting to the net.</p> <p>We need to design to less width - the iPhone, for example is 320px wide.</p> <p>Whilst the iPhone will zoom out to show the full width of a desktop email, that's not the optimal experience.</p> <p>Android devices and Blackberries can be a bit more awkward, either displaying the first 300px and allowing the user to scroll across, or mangling the layout to fit the reduced width.</p> <p>Issues around the touch interface can largely be solved by ensuring call to action buttons are nice and big, and aren't too close to each other.</p> <p>It's worth considering bumping up the size of any link text, so it's easier for the user to select.</p> <p>As images may take a long time to download (or not at all for those checking their emails on the tube), we should ensure that the key messaging is included as web text.</p> <p>It's worth reducing the size and amount of images, especially if they're not integral to the message.</p> <p>It's also worth noting that some 3G networks will compress images before they're transmitted to the phone, so image quality can end up getting degraded for some users.</p> <p>The Messaging Challenge As we're already mentioned - there's much less screen-real estate on a mobile device - where there's little chance of a recipient reading your bulky copy on a desktop, there's an even smaller chance on a mobile.</p> <p>There’s also a few tweaks we need to make to subject lines and pre-headers - most mobile devices will display up to around 40 characters of subject line , but some also display the pre-header text in the inbox.</p> <p>We have to get the message across succinctly if we're to expect recipients to make any kind of conversion.</p> <p>The Environmental Challenge Arguably the most important issue for marketers sending campaigns to users of a mobile device, is the context in which the recipient is viewing their email.</p> <p>The chances are, for example, that if the user is reading an email whilst walking down the street, they're unlikely to then go on and make a complex e-commerce purchase.</p> <p>So perhaps we should be driving these users to add a product to their wishlist, or to simply add a reminder to re-open the email once they're at home.</p> <p>We should be thinking about where we're directing our users - does the client have a mobile site to carry on the optimised experience?

<p>Hotmail have announced a new technology in their inbox called Active Views, which brings more 'app-like' technology to email by allowing it's contents to be up-to-date and more interactive.</p> <p>In the demo video below, a mailing from a hotel site allows the user to search for rooms using a booking widget and browse results, all without leaving the email.</p> <p>The service is currently in a trial with Orbitz, Monster, Netflix and LinkedIn.</p> <p>In the past we've seen similar tests from both Gmail and Yahoo (in Active Mail).</p> <p>Innovations like these could really revolutionize the email marketing experience for customers, but only if the inherent javascript and iframe based security concerns can be responsibly handled.More information on this Techcrunch article , the Hotmail Blog and find out about the tech behind the system at Microsoft Web Sandbox .</p>

<p>Developers at Microsoft last night let slip that the new version of Microsoft Outlook, Outlook 2011, will use the Webkit engine to render HTML emails.</p> <p>Webkit is developed by Apple and is used in Chrome, Safari and on the iPhone email client.Over the last five years Outlook 2007 and 2010 have long caused rendering issues and coding challenges for email marketers, as they have used the less able Word engine to render HTML.</p> <p>As a result background images, the majority of CSS/XHTML and animated gifs have not been supported.Whilst the news is not confirmed via official channels, if true it represents a significant improvement in rendering for both users of the Office suite and email marketers as a whole - currently the limitations of Outlook are holding back developments in coding across all html email, and webkit support would be a significant step towards more accessible CSS/XHTML code, and enabling newer technologies such as HTML5.</p> <h2> Image via 9-5 Mac From 9to5 Mac :</h2> <p>A little tidbit from the Microsoft gathering this evening.</p> <p> While demonstrating Outlook for Mac and the HTML rendering engine, Microsoft employees revealed that instead of using the Word HTML rendering that previous versions of Mac Office used (and the PC version as well), Microsoft has moved over to Apple’s Webkit rendering engine to render HTML mails.</p> <p> Outlook 2011 also uses WebKit to create HTML mail.For those of you who didn’t like Entourage’s HTML mail, Outlook’s WebKit mail, you are in for a pleasant surprise.Why is this a big deal? This is the first time that Microsoft has used Apple’s open source Webkit framework in their products.</p> <p> It will be interesting to see if Webkit spreads to other areas.</p> <p> See also: Email Standards Blog Post</p>

<p>One of the frequently overlooked challenges email designers face is that, either due to personal preference or the settings of their email client, many recipients will view marketing emails without images enabled .</p> <p>Almost all webmail and desktop email clients now default to not showing images, with the user having to either click 'allow images from this sender', mark the sender as a trusted address (eg.</p> <p>add to address book), or update settings within their email client.</p> <p>Some recipients are even unaware that they're missing out on seeing images at all.Regardless of the reason, it's really worth spending some time thinking how you can improve the experience for those recipients with images disabled.</p> <p>O2's email campaigns are a great example of optimising the experience for these users:</p> <p>And for comparison here's the email with images turned on:</p> <p>So what tips can we get from O2's example:</p> <p>Build using web text Ensuring your important copy is encoded as web text (instead of trapped inside an image) means that it will show when images are disabled.</p> <p>It'll also help your spam score, and increasingly will help get through intelligent inboxes like gmail's priority inbox.</p> <p>The downside is that you're restricted to the standard web fonts, so you might have to sacrifice having headlines in your brand font.</p> <p>You might want to try having headlines in a brand font, and then styling the alt attribute....</p> <p>Use alt attributes Use alt attributes on images (also known as alt tags) to specify  replacement text, especially when headlines and copy have to be included in an image.</p> <p>By default they'll be blue, so if your image is over a dark background colour you might want to consider adding style information to change the colour.</p> <p>You can extend this idea to specify a replacement typeface and font size in certain web browsers (again you're stuck with web typefaces, but you can have this as a backup against brand-font-in-an-image).</p> <h2> O2 have done this well here.</h2> <p>Code background colours You can still use background colours to add hierarchy and structure to your email, even when the email client turns images off.</p> <p>It may take a little longer to build, but it's possible to code things like call to actions so they still stand out from the rest of the page.</p> <p>O2's example has gone very in depth - they've coded the background fade as a series of table cells with background colours, instead of a large background image.</p> <p>Previously other brands have coded their logo in this fashion too.</p> <p>Be careful when doing this though - it can generate lots of  code, and if you top 100kb you'll start to get rendering issues in some email clients.</p> <p>Think about the preview pane Having a massive image taking up the whole preview pane area will look great when images are displayed, but the experience for those without is not as pretty.</p> <p>Try to get some web text and colour up there.</p> <p>Use the pre-header Think about getting your key offer in right at the top of the email - read more about pre-header best practice .</p> <p>Think about deliverability Encouraging recipients to "add to your address book" or otherwise mark your address as a trusted source will show credibility to the email client, and will help get images shown in the future.</p> <p>TEST! This is by far the most important thing to do - try disabling images using a tool like Firefox developer toolbar, or intentionally break image urls in your code and send a quick proof - it should still be possible to get the right message from your campaign even with images disabled.</p>

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