AnandGraves.com http://www.anandgraves.com Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 17 May 2012 13:17:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 HTML Email Guide http://www.anandgraves.com/html-email-guide/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=html-email-guide http://www.anandgraves.com/html-email-guide/#comments Thu, 29 Jun 2006 10:16:35 +0000 anand http://www.anandgraves.com/html-email-guide Continue reading →]]> This HTML Email Guide contains tips and tools on how to create compatible HTML email which will display correctly on most webmail and email clients.

Software for creating HTML email

Before using the editors mentioned below, it’s important that you have knowledge of HTML and CSS. You can learn HTML and CSS at Google Code University.
Also have a look at HTML and CSS at W3Schools.

There are a lot of editors available you can use. Here are a few tools you can use to create HTML email and websites:

To upload your files you can use FireFTP (Firefox extension), FileZilla and/or WinSCP.

Don’t use Microsoft Word to create HTML pages or HTML email.

The reason is Word will write a whole lot of garbage when you create HTML pages with it. Other versions of Microsoft Word also create garbage. But all you need is:

<p>Don't use Microsoft Word to create HTML files</p>

Don’t copy/paste from Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word uses a different kind of formatting of the text than for example Notepad, Notepad++, PSPad and Dreamweaver. These programs all work in text mode without formatting.

Software for sending HTML email

PHPlist

PHPlist is an open source newsletter manager. It is highly configurable and offers a lot of features such as click-tracking, templates, subscribe/unsubscribe, user management, advanced bounce handling, scheduling, throttling and a lot more.

No knowledge of PHP is required to install PHPlist.

poMMo

Read this article about poMMo for its features. You can try poMMo out at the demo page.

Webmail accounts for testing

Testing, testing and testing. Before sending out your HTML email, you have to make sure it looks good on several webmail clients. Get yourself several webmail accounts:

Besides webmail accounts you also need to have email clients to test your HTML email:

  • Mozilla Thunderbird (PC, Mac)
  • Microsoft Outlook 2003, 2007 (PC)
  • Entourage (Mac)
  • Apple Mail (Mac)

Remove unnecessary HTML tags

The following HTML tags should be removed from your HTML email, because several webmail applications and email clients are removing or ignoring these tags.

  • Script tag <SCRIPT></SCRIPT>
  • Applet tag <APPLET></APPLET>
  • Frameset tag <FRAMESET></FRAMESET>
  • Frame tag <FRAME>
  • IFrame tag <IFRAME></IFRAME>

Use tables for layout

Because of the very limited and different support of style sheets in webmail clients, the best and safe way to layout your HTML email is to use tables.

Put all images online

In your HTML email you can use embedded images or remote images.

Embedded images are attached with the email itself and are shown immediately.

Remote images are images which are located on a remote website, but are not displayed at first. In today’s webmail and email clients you have to click on a link to display the remote images.

Images from an unknown sender aren’t displayed at first because they are considered unsafe because of several security issues (e.g. spammers can validate your email address, hijack your email account, etc.). The HTML email should be as small as possible in size (KB’s). Using remote images results in very few KB’s and therefore less bandwidth when sending it.

Hide the image toolbar in IE

If you put your mouse over an image in Internet Explorer, the image toolbar appears. This only occurs if your image is larger than 200×200 pixels and when it’s not a background image.

Most people find the image toolbar annoying, but it also distracts the reader from your content. To hide the image toolbar for an image, use the galleryimg attribute in the <IMG> tag:

<img src="cd.gif" width="20" height="30" galleryimg="no" alt="CD of group X" title="Order this CD">

Use absolute urls

Use absolute urls for all your images and links, for example:

<img src="http://www.example.com/images/head.gif" width="20" height="60"> <a href="http://www.example.com/products/shoes/tiger.html">Tiger</a>

When using long urls you risk getting broken links or broken images. Your email program or the email program of your recipient could wrap the long URL along several lines. This can cause part of the url to be clickable instead of the whole url:

http://www.example.com/very_long_name/5r6t/2003fd544/3553ag dkgj3d/a453b96/g5?a=36hd27hdh48f27dh

Webmail clients can also add a space (%20) when a url is too long:

<img src="http://www.example.com/mailings/2005/april/17/header_top_disc%20ount.jpg" width="230" height="45" title="Discount at ...">

To avoid this use short urls:

<img src="http://www.example.com/2004/11/images/1.jpg" width="10" height="60"> <a href="http://www.example.com/2004/11/index.html">Go to discounts</a>

This code can be rewritten to:

<img src="http://www.example.com/2004/11/1.jpg" width="10" height="60"> <a href="http://www.example.com/2004/11/">Go to discounts</a>

Keep the following in mind when you want to use a short url:

  • Don’t use an images directory. Place the images in the same directory as the index.html (newsletter); /images/1.jpg becomes /1.jpg
  • Use numbers as names for pictures; header_cd.jpg becomes 1.jpg.
  • Rename spacer.gif to s.gif
  • If you use a link in your newsletter to refer to an online version of your newsletter, then you will mostlikely use a tracking variable in the url. For example: http://www.example.com/2004/11/index.html?trck=nov1104.
    You can rewrite this to for example http://www.example.com/2004/11/?trck=nov1104

Snipurl can also help by shortening your url. Just enter a url and Snipurl will shorten it by given you a new url that will never expire. There are
several services like this (tinyurl and Make A Shorter Link), but Snipurl can do a lot more. Take a look at what you can do with Snipurl.

Use simple style sheets, that means not to use absolute or relative positioning. This is bad supported by most webmail. Don’t use external or embedded style sheets, because email programs are removing or ignoring everything between the <HEAD></HEAD>. That means the <LINK> tag won’t work if you want to define external style sheets.

Use inline stylesheets for fonts, font colors, links, background colors, etc. For example:

<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 150%; color: red"> <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.</p> <p>Vivamus ut sem. Fusce aliquam nunc vitae purus.</p> </td> <td style="font-family: Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; text-transform: uppercase; color: black"> Vivamus ut sem. Fusce aliquam nunc vitae purus.</td> </tr> </table>

If you have a HTML Email design with embedded stylesheets, you can use Inline styler or Premailer to make them inline. At Campaign Manager you can read more about Premailer.

Most webmail and email clients use a white background color to display messages. Often webmail clients ignore or remove the <BODY> tag, which is why background colors often don’t work.

When you do use a diferent background color than white you could mess up your design. This could for example happen if you create your design for a red background. Images may have a red background. When viewed in a webmail client, you mostlikely will see a white background and images with a red background that doesn’t seamlessly integrate with the background color.

The best thing to do is to create your design with a white background color. If you must use a different background color than white, you can use a table with a 100% width and perhaps 100% height to simulate the background color:

<table width="100%" height="100%"> <tr> <td bgcolor="#FF0000"> <table width="400" align="center"> <tr> <td>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetuer</td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table>

Unless you know for sure your target audience is using an email client such as Outlook or Thunderbird, a background color can be used without problems. For example if your sending HTML email to employers within a company who all use the same email client.

As already mentioned webmail clients often ignore or remove the <BODY> tag, which is why background images often don’t work.

Unless you know for sure your target audience is using an email client such as Outlook or Thunderbird, a background image can be used without problems. For example if your sending HTML email to employers within a company who all use the same email client.

You have to specify the font, font color and the font size for all the text and links in every table cell
(create your design with tables). If you don’t specify a style, then most webmail clients will use their own style sheets. This could result in displaying different fonts, font colors and sizes and could also mess up your design.

Hotmail and Yahoo display Arial as the default font if you don’t specify a font. Gmail uses Verdana. Hotmail uses a 11px
as the default font size, Yahoo uses 12px and Gmail uses 16px.

Below is an example. This is the minimum of style sheets required to style text and links.

<table width="400" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; color: black"> <p><a href="http://www.website.com/030205/" style="font-family: Verdana, font-size: 11px; color: blue">Lorem</a> ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.</p></td> <td style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; color: black">Vivamus ut sem. Fusce aliquam nunc vitae purus.</td> </tr> </table>

I always use text-decoration: underline to make it clear to
the reader that it’s a link:

<a href="http://www.website.com/030205/" style="font-family: Verdana, font-size: 11px; color: blue; text-decoration: underline">Lorem</a>

Email addresses and URLs as text

In most cases when using an email address or an URL as text it will be given a default style. For example:

Send all your questions to contact@example.com
Go to http://www.example.com for more information
Go to www.example.com for more information
Go to sub.example.com for more information

Gmail and Yahoo give all the above text a default style even though they aren’t links. Hotmail and Windows Live Hotmail don’t give default styles to URLs without http://.

Use the alt attribute to describe your images except spacers. The alt text is displayed when images aren’t being displayed. Image aren’t displayed by default by most webmail and email clients.

The title attribute can be just for almost any element (links, images, tables, etc.). Use the title attribute if you want to display a tooltip to describe the element. It is recommended to use it for links and images. For example:

<img src="cd.jpg" width="170" height="230" alt="Kool Keith CD - black elvis" title="The new Kool Keith CD> <a href="http://www.website.com/order.php?id=23" title="Order the new Kool Keith CD">Order CD</a>

Move your mouse over this link to view a tooltip.

The <P> tag in Internet Explorer uses more space (margin-top and margin-bottom) than in Gecko-based browsers. This could lead to layout problems.

For example, if you’re using a table width a fixed width and height and your design is based upon these dimensions. If you have content in the table within <P> tags, than the height of the table could increase in Internet Explorer which could lead to gaps in your design.

To prevent layout problems use the <BR> tag instead of the <P> tag as it renders the same in all browsers. If you still have troubles with the layout you can also use spacers instead of the <P> and the <BR> tag.

Another problem with <P> tags is in Windows Live Hotmail. <P> tags are removed. So the safest way is to use the <BR> tag.

Use 1×1 transparent images (spacers) to force tables to display the correct width and height. For example:

<table width="200"> <tr> <td width="50">&nbsp;</td> <td width="150">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet adipiscing.</td> </tr> </table>

The table cell with a width of 50 pixels only has a space as content. This doesn’t mean the specified width will be displayed correctly. If the width of the first table cell isn’t displayed
correctly, than this is mostlikey also the case width the second table cell.

You have to force the width to be displayed correctly:

<table width="200"> <tr> <td><img src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/images/spacer.gif" width="50" height="1"></td> <td><img src="http://www.yourwebsite.com/images/spacer.gif" width="150" height="1"></td> </tr> <tr> <td>&nbsp;</td> <td>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet adipiscing.</td> </tr> </table>

Choosing a width mostly applies to webmail clients. When you double click on an email in Outlook or Thunderbird, you can almost view it full screen.

With a resolution at 1024×768 you can use a maximum width of 750px. But you can also use a higher width. If you use a higher width (for example 800px) at 1024×768 a horizontal scrollbar could appear in your webmail client. But this doesn’t have to be a problem, because all of your content is still visible. Perhaps you have to scroll a little in horizontal direction.

With a resolution at 800×600 you can use a maximum width of 580px. But again, you can also use a higher width which could show a horizontal scrollbar. If you open your Hotmail account at 800×600 a horizontal scrollbar will appear no matter wich width you use. I guess
this is because of the ad banner (sky scraper, 160x600px) on the right and the large banner (super banner, 728×90) at the top.

Le cool magazine demonstrates this with an horizontal design of their weekly newsletter.

Hotmail ignores forms in HTML email to ensure that messages do not contain malicious scripts. Other webmail services (Gmail and Yahoo) and email clients support the use of forms.

If you intend on sending HTML emails with a form and amongst your recipients are also people with a Hotmail email address, than I would recommend not using a form. Instead use a link to refer to a form on a HTML page.

JavaScript in HTML email is never a good idea because of all the dangerous scripting (for example XSS attacks) that can be executed. For this reason most webmail and email clients disable JavaScript by removing or ignoring it.

For example, this code:

<a href="javascript://" onclick="window.open('http://www.website.com/cd.html','','width=500,height=400')">View tracklisting</a>

would be rewritten to:

<a href="#">View tracklisting</a>

The solution is to refer to the tracklisting without JavaScript.

<a href="http://www.yourwebsite.com/discount/cd.html">View tracklisting</a>

Although you test your HTML email with different webmail and email clients, you never can be sure how it will display in your recipients email program. In case it doens’t display correctly provide a link at the top of every HTML email to view your HTML email in the browser for an online version, for example:

if this email doesn't display correctly, view the online version

The example link used here is http://www.example.com/mailings/2005/01/. Use structured directories, so you can archive all your HTML emails easily.

Use the <TITLE> tag in the online version. If you omit the tag in the online version, Internet Explorer will show the url as the title.

Check the statistics for your website so you can see which browsers are the most popular among your visitors. If you want to test your design in multiple browsers on a Windows machine then you have several options.

Standalone browsers

The easiest options are to use standalone browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Opera. If you want to test in multiple older versions of Internet Explorer, try Spoon’s Sandboxed IE6/7/8 (torrent). Download this with uTorrent for example.  Read more about Spoon’s Sandboxed browsers.

You can also try IETester. You can test websites in IE5.5, IE6, IE7, IE8 Beta 2 and you can use tabs. Every tab can be a different IE version.

A substantial part of your subscribers are probably still using Hotmail or Windows Live Mail. To get your newsletter arrive in the inbox of your Hotmail/Windows Live Mail subscribers is still the hardest thing to accomplish. Read this document from Microsoft titled “Improving E-mail Deliverability into Windows Live Hotmail” (26 pages, 1,02 MB).

When you try to use Flash in your HTML email the HTML code gets removed or ignored by webmail and email clients.

The best thing to do is to put your Flash movie online. Then in your HTML email create an attractive clickable image that refers to the Flash movie online. Also put above or under the clickable image a text link with text from the image. Because images are not displayed by
default, the recipient will see the text first. Unless your address is in the address book of the recipient.

Validate your HTML and CSS

Validating your HTML and CSS decreases the incorrect display of your HTML email.

Track your email campaigns with Google Analytics. A Gmail account is required to use analytics.

  1. Go to the website of PHPMailer and download the latest version.
  2. Unpack PHPMailer and upload it to your website.
  3. Copy and paste the following code in a php file (e.g. test.php) and upload it to your website: 
    <?php require("class.phpmailer.php"); $mail = new PHPMailer(); $mail->From = "namesender@name.com"; $mail->FromName = "Firstname Lastname"; $mail->AddBCC('namerecipient1@name.com', 'John Doe1'); $mail->AddBCC('namerecipient2@name.com', 'John Doe2'); $mail->AddBCC('namerecipient3@name.com', 'John Doe3'); $mail->WordWrap = 50; $mail->IsHTML(true); $mail->Subject = "Here is the subject"; $mail->Body = "<<<HTMLCODE <p>Copy and paste your <b>HTML code</b> here</p> HTMLCODE; if(!$mail->Send()) { echo "Message could not be sent. <p>"; echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo; exit; } echo "Message has been sent"; ?>
  4. Open the php file online, e.g.:http://www.website.com/phpmailer/test.php
  5. You should see “Message has been sent”.

If you know for sure your target audience uses a standalone email program such as Outlook or Thunderbird (or another) than it’s easier to create a HTML email.

You have far less limitations than a webmail client:

  • you can use embedded style sheets (css in the head)
  • you can use forms
  • you can use a background color
  • you can use a background image
  • you can use absolute positioning
  • you can use meta tags

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