Chapter Twenty-Six

The Text vs. HTML Email Debate

By Ben Hart

There is a debate among email marketers about whether high-design HTML email works best or whether it’s best just to send simple text-only emails.

My answer to this question is that it all depends.  It all depends on the purpose of your email communication.  There are pros and cons to both.

High-design HTML email shows up in your in-box looking like a real newsletter or web page.

First, I’ll give you the argument for text-only email.

The argument here is that text-only email has a better chance of getting through the spam filters. 

I have a higher deliverability rate for my text-only emails.

High-design HTML emails that look more like a real newsletter are more likely to get snagged or blocked by spam filters.

In addition, more and more people have hand-held devices that receive email – Blackberrys, Palm Pilots, mobile phones, etc.  Many people set these devices to read text only, no graphics because text is easier to load and read, especially on a small screen.  So people prefer text emails for the handheld devices.  Though this might be changing back because of the iPhone.  People like graphics even on their hand-held screens.

But others just want text.  Some people even set their own main computers to read text-only.

Now, I’ll give you the argument for higher-design HTML emails.

The higher-design, nicely laid out email that looks like a real newsletter or ezine attracts more readers and gets a much higher click-through rate than a text-only email.

These can be entire web-pages that arrive in an email.

On average, I  do make more sales with a higher design HTML email.  It has more impact when it arrives in the email in-box.

But I don’t get many more sales with the high-design HTML email that looks like a web page.

The increase in sales with high-design HTML email is diminishing and becoming more marginal.

But HTML email has another key advantage.

You can track the performance of your email.  You can code the links in your HTML to find out who is opening your email and who is clicking through to your site.

Your hosted email marketing services such as iContact.com do this for you automatically.  No coding by you needed.  It’s just part of the service – the email tracking and reporting features.

You can’t track your open rates with text-only email – at least not as far as I know.

So that’s a big advantage of HTML higher-design email.

So there are pros and cons to both.

Text-only email has advantages and disadvantages.

High-design HTML has advantages and short-comings – the biggest short-coming being reduced delivery.

So how do I solve this dilema?

Well, I do it two ways.

First, I mix it up.  Some of my emails are simple text-only.  Some of my emails are higher-design HTML.

As when choosing any marketing media, you will find that some people respond better to text-only, while others respond better to high-design HTML.  You want to appeal to both markets.

The more sophisticated, more educated, higher-end business reader will usually prefer text-only.

These are busy people who want the bottom line message fast.  They might be scanning though scores of emails.  They don’t want to sit around a wait for graphics to load.  They want the bottom-line point of why your are writing so they can decide fast whether any action on their part is needed.

Kids and teenagers prefer high-design HTML with lots of the bells and whistles. Women usually prefer high-design HTML.  So it really depends.

Most information marketers who are aiming at the business market will use text-only.  But if you are selling Disney Vacations, fashion or art, you probably want to use more high-design HTML.

As with every marketing tool, you must choose the right tool for the marketing challenge at hand.

So I just mix it up.  I send some text-only and some HTML higher design.

But there is something else I do that is important.

When I prepare and HTML higher-design email, I always check to see how the text-only version of it looks.

I take into account those people who have hand-held devices and who have set their computers to read text only for their email.

A text-only version of a high-designed HTML email can look pretty silly and incoherent.

So you need to make sure your HTML email looks presentable as text-only.

In addition, I prepare a text-only version of my HTML email.

iContact, Aweber and most other reputable email marketing systems for small business are designed to detect whether a recipient of your email is reading text-only.

So you prepare two versions.

The downside of this is that the detection system is far from perfect.  So what happens sometimes is that your HTML email will still be sent to a portion of those who are reading just text.

You still need to take steps to make sure your HTML emails do not look ridiculous if they show up as text-only – that is, with all the images, graphics and formatting stripped out.

Keep in mind also that your emails will arrive looking different in different systems -- even your high-design HTML emails.

That’s because people set their emails to appear in all kinds of ways. Some are set to display just certain fonts.  Some are set to show big print, some small print.

So it’s important to send test versions of your email to different computers and email services to see how your email looks in different systems.

Err on the side of keeping your email simple and basic – which is yet another argument for text-only email.  It’s hard to get in trouble or look really silly with text-only.

Text-only is definitely the safer way.

But there is one big way you can look silly when you send text-only.

For text-only email, you want each line to be no longer than 67 characters, with a hard break at the end of each line.   If your lines are longer than 67 characters, what happens is your emails show up with line breaks in all kinds of weird places.

So that’s important.  Make your lines no longer than 67 characters and include a hard break at the end of each line of your text-only emails.

And for your links in your text-only emails, don’t say “Click Here” because if you click, nothing happens.  Say “Go Here.”

Most people now know that when they see a text link, they can copy and paste it into their browser.

Even for my HTML email, I now just say “Go Here” right above the link..  And then I include the full link, not a button graphic.  So even my HTML emails are designed a lot like my simple text-only emails.

The simpler your email design and message, the higher the delivery rate, and the less chance your email will look silly when it’s delivered.

Okay, enough for now on mechanics and delivery – which is certainly all-important.

Let’s turn now to content.

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