Design Tips: Email Don’ts
Here’s a list of things to avoid in your emails!
• Advanced HTML tags such as <div> or <iframe>.
• A heavily nested table structure
• Javascript
• Cascading Stylesheets to define page layout or advanced CSS to control things like margins and float location.
• Spaces in HTML links.
• Empty cells – best practice is to use spacer images to control cell size
• Flash or other multimedia programs – unless it is clear that some recipients will have issues rendering the multimedia and or flash
• Embedded images – too intensive to download and can be pushed to attachments
• High level ASCII characters such as ®, or ©.
• Large images that frustrate users by taking a long time to download.
• Images with lots of text – use images for pictures only, and send any text as part of the email content. This makes the email smaller and maximizes the number of people who can view the text message.
Email marketing can sometimes be a little daunting, but I hope these tips keep you out of the ditch…