Loopfuse Marketing Automation Blog - The Mouth of the Funnel » eMail Marketing

Tips for Better HTML Email Design

Richard Murdock — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:16:00 +0000

This post will be about designing the HTML layout of your email campaigns. For most of the web designers out there, I feel your pain when it comes to designing HTML for email. It’s so much easier and more flexible to use CSS rather than older HTML methods. Unfortunately the email client world has not moved on much from the 1990’s and that means that new developers that have always coded in CSS must learn the coding methods of yesteryear and produce HTML that will work in those clients. So here are a few tips when tackling email campaign layout.

Keep the layout simple

Email layouts should be simple and direct. You can still communicate quite a lot of information with a simple approach and it will help in creating HTML code that is cross-platform compatible. The three row table (header, body, footer) with nested tables and content within is a good start.

Use tables

Email clients do not handle CSS very well. They especially have a hard time with DIVs for layout. That means that it’s time to dust off the old HTML books – or take the modern approach and look it up online. I’d suggest http://w3schools.com/ for brushing up on your table layout code. They have “Try it Yourself” buttons in each section that you see how code will look in the browser you are using. You may need to use some spacing cells to get things just the way you want them. Experiment until you have it right.

Set widths on cells

You will be relying on cell widths to align columns of text. You can use percentages if you don’t have a lot of images in the email, but they may look strange if scaled improperly. Be specific like this:

Information Here

Keep the overall width under control

Try to keep the body of your email to no larger than 500-600 pixels wide. Keep in mind what people will be using to preview your email. A lot of consumers will see your email in a preview pane with just a couple of lines visible before they click on it. If that space is taken up by large images or irrelevant information they may not even open it. People are increasingly using their smartphones to access email on the go. Although I love my Android phone, the viewable area is much smaller than my desktop monitor.

Smart use of CSS

Again, CSS is not your best friend in email templates. Never attach it to the tag. Do not try to link to external style sheets. If you do so, many email clients will strip it out before delivering it to the Inbox (*cough* Google *cough*) and that will simply destroy your layout. You can use it sparingly inline like this:

Title text

Most email clients should have no problems with inline styling. If you do see problems in your testing, go back to early HTML formatting:
Sample Text

Actual size images

Some email clients will stretch your image just like a web page and others will completely ignore the stretching rules. The only way to avoid this issue is to use images that are exactly the right size. This is where having a simple layout will play to your advantage. If you have a complicated layout with graphics stretching across table cells, you may have to slice them up just right.
There is some debate on whether you should explicitly set the width and height of you images. One problem with doing this is that you risk having gaps in your email while images are blocked. If you’re OK with that, then go ahead and set them, but just be aware.

Don’t embed video

Don’t do it. There are only a couple of email clients that can play video from within, and even then only if it’s in a certain format. If you need to promote a video use a still frame image and link that over to wherever you have it hosted (or on a landing page). This may change as HTML5 picks up and more clients can handle that coding but, for now, you might want to take a more simple approach.

Background Images

Background images are another sticky problem. I would suggest that you avoid use of background images wherever possible because of formatting issues in certain email clients. Outlook 2007 simply won’t load them. If you must use them, background colors or images must be assigned to the cell of the table and then width/height of the cell set explicitly. Even then you need to have content that will fill the height correctly.

Use Alt text for images

It’s generally a good idea to use Alt text for images in web pages and it’s useful in email campaigns as well. If people have blocked images they can still get information that may be interesting to them and prompt them to turn on images for further details.
An example might be a coupon image that promotes 50% off a product and alt text that states “Save money with this coupon”. It’s enough to get the person to turn on images to see what the exact deal is. The side benefit of this is that it will also count as an email open at that point. Blocked images prevent the tracking of email opens.

Use clean HTML code

Close your

and

tags. Spammers are sloppy. Don’t be a spammer.

Test, test, test

I can’t stress this enough. Test your email in several clients such as Thunderbird and Outlook. Make sure it looks good in Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo. Test those clients in several browsers such as IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera. Unfortunately, Outlook 2007 and 2010 took a great leap *backward* by using Word as their HTML rendering engine rather than Internet Explorer. This caused all sorts of compatibility issues with HTML display for those clients.

As long as you design for the lowest common denominator, you should be able to reach most email clients without a lot of extra workaround code. Keeping the layout simple will also help you focus your message. Be aware of how much space you have to capture a customer’s attention in their email client and use that to your advantage.

There are several places on the web that you can find free email templates, or even pay for some nicer ones. Here are a few examples I found when Googling about:

HTML Email Gallery – http://www.htmlemailgallery.com/
CampaignMonitor free downloads – http://www.campaignmonitor.com/templates/
Template Zone – http://www.templatezone.com

2011 Marketing Automation Survey Results Are In!

srentner — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 19:53:03 +0000

As part of our ongoing effort to deliver educational and useful marketing automation technology tools that help drive revenue at SMBs, we launched the 2011 Marketing Automation survey. The online survey was promoted via social networking sites and email to sales and marketing professionals. More than 400 professionals responded.

Here’s a quick look at some of the results:

Better quality leads is the most important benefit of marketing automation among respondents, followed closely by a better understanding of prospect behavior and a higher volume of leads overall.
Email Marketing tops the list of the most widely used marketing automation features, followed closely by Web Lead Capture.
High cost of marketing automation software cited as the top barrier to adoption.
Social Media Monitoring and Campaign ROI Reporting are top priorities for 2011.
The benefits and strong ROI from Lead Scoring are not yet being widely realized by marketing organizations.

We are also pleased to announce the recipient of the $500 gift card, awarded for filling out the survey: David Burget, from Omaha, Neb.

His favorite Marketing Automation feature: Inbound Marketing. His company uses marketing automation to determine “which companies have visited the site.” According to David, the sales team “loves the ability to pinpoint return visits” and they use that information as talking points during sales calls.

Want to see more of the results? Download the 2011 Marketing Automation survey report.

Arrival of LoopFuse OneView 3.31

Tom Elrod — Sat, 14 May 2011 13:00:50 +0000

May 15th marks the release of LooFuse OneView v3.31. This new release focuses on expanded integration for web form hosting and inbound marketing, along with enhanced international support for our global users.

Wufoo Integration

Wufoo is a free online service that provides a simple and attractive way to build and host web forms. Wufoo features can include field data validation, user prompts, customized HTML, and a host of other goodies that would normally require a programmer to implement.

With the addition of the LoopFuse integration to Wufoo forms, users will be able to automatically capture these form submissions within their LoopFuse account while still maintaining all the other tracking data for prospects, such as page views.

International Character Support

The world is getting smaller and marketers need to be able to communicate on a global level. This, along with our increasing international user base, has led to the full support of the UTF-8 character set within all aspects of LoopFuse, including lead capture, list import, email campaigns, CRM export and reporting. LoopFuse now supports over 650 languages.

Extension of Inbound Marketing to the CRM

Last year we added Inbound Marketing / Search Engine Marketing to our feature set, which enables marketers to analyze which referring sites, search engines, and keywords are leading to the highest level of lead capture form conversions. Within this release, we are extending this functionality to the CRM by passing along data, such as referring site and search keywords, to the CRM lead and contact records. This, in turn, provides more information to the sales team and the ability to generate more comprehensive reports from within the CRM.

Special thanks to our customers for submitting these and other feature requests via the LoopFuse Community!

5 Things to Think about Before Hitting the Send Button

Cindy Ryan — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 14:55:18 +0000

There are a variety of different emails that I send out through LoopFuse OneView on a monthly basis. With a freemium offering of our product, the volume of inbound leads we receive has increased substantially making it more important to nurture these prospects through email marketing. I have emails that have been created and built into leadflows so that my existing database of users feel the LoopFuse love and we continue to educate them on the best practices within the product. In addition, there are prospects that we reach out to through email marketing to help educate them on marketing automation and the benefits of utilizing such a tool.

No matter what type of email I am crafting, I always run down a checklist of 5 things before I click the “Send” button. Because once that button has been pressed – there is no going back.

1. I want to make sure my call-to-action is compelling enough for the list of prospects I am targeting. Did I create content that is relevant to my target audience? Is there a call-to-action? Remember who your audience is before sending any email out. Is this a prospect list of C-level people or IT management? Customer or prospect? A technical whitepaper may be appealing to your IT friends but few CEOs will find the time or have the interest in this type of material. Read through your message one more time – make sure you have put something in the subject line that will grab your audience’s attention and make them click-thru.

2. I double-check that my personalized fields are pulling accurate data. The personalization feature in our email marketing tool is pretty powerful. I can add lead information directly from my CRM and populate it into an email campaign I am sending. Or I can pull contact information from an existing list in Loopfuse like a tradeshow attendee list. I think it is nice to add a personal touch to an email but you have to know your list and the accuracy of the fields you are pulling from. I used a list from a recent tradeshow where we had gathered information through a lead retrieval machine. The way that the conference had collected information was First Name/Middle Initial in the First Name column. If I would have sent an email using the personalization feature for the first name it would look unprofessional – “Hi Cindy C.” Always check your list for contact information accuracy. In addition, did you set your “personalization defaults?” This will prevent any of the personalized fields you have entered from appearing blank. Instead of Hi “blank” your recipient would see Hi “valued customer.”

3. I read through my email and do everything possible to decrease my chances of looking like spam to my target list. First, make sure your unsubscribe link is functional and looks good. In Loopfuse, you have the ability to customize the link so that you are not just ending an email with some bold, black link at the bottom of the page. Let’s be honest, as a marketing or sales person you sometimes wish that unsubscribe link was not there. So I take the time to incorporate the link into the overall design of my email template. Now it is an integrated part of my email design and can even look like you personally added it similar to your signature. Second, have a read through my message and avoided any “spam” terms; for instance, do I have the word “free” scribbled throughout the text. And lastly, have I utilized the Auto-Authentication feature in our product. New to Loopfuse, using this feature lets the receiving email server know that the email is coming from “Loopfuse”, on behalf of “you” making your email look less spammy.

4. I send a test email. I cannot stress the testing enough. And Loopfuse makes it really easy with its new user interface to send test emails as you create your content. You just type in up to 10 email addresses straight from the campaign wizard and hit send. This gives you the ability to send your email to multiple email addresses and test the appearance within the different email clients. For example, when I test my campaigns I test to my @loopfuse, @yahoo and @gmail addresses. This allows me to see how my HTML renders in each client. Not only do you need relevant content in your email but you want them to look professional – no misspellings or weird characters added into the message.

5. I schedule my email campaign for a future date or build a lead flow that will send it out based on the prospect’s activity. Avoid sending emails to prospects too frequently. The last thing you want is a hot prospect to be turned off because he has received 5 emails from you in one week. Make sure you check to see how recently your list of prospects has been emailed. I avoid this issue by building leadflows for my prospects which automatically sends out emails over a certain time period – not too often but often enough to stay relevant.

Until next time…

Marketing Automation Buyer's Guide to Email Deliverability

Roy Russo — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 15:00:16 +0000

Email Deliverability is a hot-topic today as marketers seek to fine-tune their outbound messaging and engage customers with mass email campaigns and lead nurturing programs. Before making a purchase decision for a marketing automation platform, buyers should know the basics of email deliverability, as it will have a direct impact on the success or failure of their marketing programs and ROI.

The list below is composed of technology and usability items that we believe are a base-line for achieving increased deliverablity rates from your email marketing campaigns.

IP Segmentation : Eliminating the techno-babble and simplifying this a bit… buyers should verify that a vendor is sending from more than one server. Why? If just one customer sends SPAM from that one server, every customer will be negatively affected, because in the eye of the blacklist-gods, you all look the same (because you share the same IP address). Most vendors provide groups of IP addresses that they routinely monitor and additionally segment high-volume or high-paying customers in certain groups. IP Segmentation and IP management by your vendor are the most important factor in email deliverability. If a vendor looks confused when you ask them about these concepts… run!
Auto-Authentication : Many email marketing vendors today offer a built-in method to “auto-authenticate” your email messages as they are sent from their systems. Authentication lets the receiving email server know that the email is coming from “LoopFuse”, on behalf of “you”. By doing this, your email appears less suspect to email spam filters, because the email headers are not altered as though the email originated from a different source (something that spammers normally do). This is a great way to increase email deliverability… some vendors automatically enforce this, and other leave it optional. Keep in mind, that how your email will “look” to a recipient will change, read more.
Opt-Out Enforcement : The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 makes it unlawful for an email sender to not include a mechanism for a recipient to unsubscribe from future mailings. Verify that your marketing automation vendor has some measures in place to force opt-out links or other means for recipients to unsubscribe.
SPAM and Abuse Policy : A missing or laissez-faire SPAM or email abuse policy is a signal of impending doom for your email marketing programs. If your marketing automation vendor does not enforce good email sending best practices, you can count the minutes until every email server the vendor has will be blacklisted and so will your email marketing programs.
Email Blacklist Monitoring : Vendors normally subscribe to third-party blacklist monitoring solutions which enable them to monitor which of their IP addresses have been blacklisted and quickly remove that IP address from the available group of sending IPs. It is difficult to verify whether a vendor is actively monitoring blacklists and taking appropriate steps, but in any event, the question should be put to the vendors.
Email Abuse Handling : Verify that your marketing automation vendor offers some method for recipients to report email abuse. Marketers may not want to be reported, but look at it this way… it is better that your vendors be alerted to a spam complaint than a blacklist be alerted. An email abuse page will typically consist of a short form, much like this one, where a recipient can go to file a report.

Still with me?

Good. Now for the dirty little secret most marketers don’t know… every vendor gets blacklisted at some point by some random blacklist somewhere in the random universe (or multiverse, for you Stephen Hawking fans). Getting blacklisted is not an issue of “if”, but “when”. The important things to ask yourself as a buyer is, “Does this vendor have plans and resources in place to react to a blacklist-event?”. Hopefully this short article will lead you on your way to asking the right set of questions and choosing the vendor that’s right for you.

Webinar: Launching your first email campaign and viewing analytics

Cindy Ryan — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:36:00 +0000

Live Webinar: Thursday September 16th, 2010 11am PDT/2pm EDT

Join us for the launch of our new webinar series “Light the Fuse.” This series is intended to provide you, the LoopFuse user, valuable tips and tricks on how to use LoopFuse to grow your business.

First on the agenda: Launching your first email campaign and viewing analytics

How will this help grow my business?

Email marketing is an effective way to nurture your existing database of prospects. By continuing to email relevant content about your product or service you are reminding them of the value you can bring to their business. Email marketing can help you start turning your most valued prospects into paying customers.

You will learn how to:

• Create and send great looking email campaigns.
• Personalize emails using CRM contact information.
• Schedule email marketing campaigns for delivery.
• Track and Analyze email response metrics.
• Track email activity in your CRM

Click here to register for the webinar.

Get FUSED!