Optimising your Alt text copy and style for different email clients

Value: [rating=4] Our commentary : A real nitty gritty piece of best practice advice for improving email marketing by changing the way you use image Alt text. Following the advice here won't transform your email marketing, but it should boost response and there is also some interesting data on the most popular email clients you should be testing against: Marketing implications : You probably know that careful tailoring of the Alt tag can help your messages stand out where images is are blocked. This post from Campaign monitor gives some best practice tips on using the Alt tag There are a couple of tips here about using shorter Alt text and styling of Alt text which is needed in some clients such as Yahoo! Mail, iPhone and Outlook 2007/2010. Recommended link: Popularity of different email clients and…

Value: [rating=3] Our commentary: Mark Brownlow's review of Litmus - an inbox preview tool shows the benefits of knowing how your emails appear in different inboxes. It's always been difficult to get emails to render correctly for the main readers. You're very dependent on the skills of your email designer in tailoring their HTML and CSS for Email since it's so different to web design. Marketing implications: It's particularly you ask your agency to test a new design against all the main email reading platforms listed here. Increasingly, email service providers like the SmartFOCUS tool we use incorporates email platform preview within the system and make it part of the process of editing and reviewing and email, so make sure you ask the question when you switch providers too. Recommended link: Email Tool review - review of Litmus…

Last month I gave four reasons why the status quo isn't good enough for your email marketing. One reason was growing email competition, so it seems sensible to review some of the things you can do to ensure it's your email that gets attention in the inbox. We'll start with the in-email factors (from line, subject line, preview pane and preheader) and then address out-of-email factors (which most people forget about).

The from line

We tend to focus on the subject line, but we also know that the name of the sender is at least as important in helping recipients decide whether an email is worth attention or not. (more…)…

In email marketing, what you see is not what your readers see. Literally.

The lovely HTML email template you or your designer sent to your email account may look great to you. But once that email lands in the inboxes of your list, it can look very different. How can that be? Read full post on 9 email preview tools…

This is a question asked in the UK Netmarketing forum. I thought my answer might be interesting to other marketers reviewing their e-mail marketing, so here it is! The remainder of the question: "If you were purely looking at the design and copy of such an email. Lets take for granted that mailing list is well targeted and the offer is good. Ive recently heard Hotmail doesn't like CSS, "click here" is frowned upon by SPAM filters, and a host of other dos and don'ts. As a newbie though Im finding it tough to determine best practices, so who better to ask than the list. I'm not after trade secrets just some good pointers. Thanks in advance. Lee

My answer

5?! That's a good challenge for email marketers on the list. I may have cheated with a few more. I would say, based on the limitations of "newbie emails" I see, and what works…