Training Marketer

Thanks to those at My Creative Team THINKing for sending out the warning about the trouble in “Email City” and sharing the new study by the Email Experience Council with us.

You have to create an account to view the report, but here’s the gist of it:

• 23% of retailers send emails that are completely unintelligible when images are blocked.
• Of the 77% of intelligible emails, there were significant variations in clarity based on their use of HTML text and alt tags.
• 42% of retailers designed emails that were a good mix of HTML text and images.
• 63% of retailers used alt tags on images adequately or extensively.

Outlook 2007 is a major technical reason for increasing deliverability problems, according to THINKing. Marketers should also be aware that the use of HTML and alt tags are large determinants of email deliverability.

Those at THINKing are working on an email marketing white paper covering the topic of technical considerations in email design that will hopefully shed some light on how to increase deliverability rates.

With email design, less is often more according to a recent blog post from email marketing leader ExactTarget.

“When dealing with designers on certain email projects, I have been reminded of the old saying:

To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Or, to put it in design terms:

To a designer with Photoshop, everything looks like a canvas to be filled.”

There should be a single purpose to your email communication with customers. Don’t clutter the email with too many messages, images or hard to read text.

An email can be deleted as fast as the blink of an eye. So, be sure to get your message across quickly and keep your primary message at the very top of the email.

Think about how your email will be viewed by the recipient. If the email is delivered to an Outlook account, you may only have the space alloted in the preview pane to catch someone’s attention.

While your designers may want to create a fancy, jam-packed email to wow customers, remember one thing - keep it simple.