Creating HTML Messages

August 23rd, 2009 by Mamod

If you’re like the rest of us then you prefer sending catchy HTML newsletter over those boring Plain text emails, true, but since we are in business then what works better for us is our choice, in most cases Text messages are much better in term of readability because it’s straight forward and it renders in all email clients the same why while creating an HTML message need alot of work and testing before making sure it’s good to fit all email clients.

Well, we have some tips for you to follow when creating your HTML newsletter, following these tips

When creating HTML messages don’t go wild, don’t use a lot of images and don’t use many CSS styling methods, keep your message as simple as possible.

Make sure that your message is readable even without the images you add, don’t put important text inside an image, because Email clients do not allow images as a security measurements, they block images and readers/subscribers have to click “Allow To View Images” button before they can see any.

Use tables to layout your message, laying out using CSS does not work the way it should, so when it coes to Newsletters design stick with the old fashioned tables.

Use Multipart Mime Format, meaning when you create an HTML message always include a text copy of your message, this because some email readers do not like HTML messages, they can only read plain/text messages.

Do not put your newsletter/HTML message content inside <html><body> tags, you’re creating a newsletter not a web page, and since this message will render inside another web page, email readers tend to remove these tags to avoid conflicts with their own layout and styling

Really, creating a beautiful HTML newsletter is not simple, at least if you want it to work with all email clients the way it should, so we always suggest you to TEST …TEST …TEST, try to send your message to different email accounts, create free accounts with Yahoo, hotmail, gmail, and aol then see how your message renders in these clients before sending it to your subscribers.