MailChimp Blog

10 Emails with Images-Off

Here's a great review of 10 HTML emails from 10 different retailers, and how they all looked with images turned off:

http://www.banane.com/workblog/?p=32

Most of us know that when you receive HTML email, the images are turned off by default. You have to click a button to display them. But I'm surprised by how many new email marketers think that won't apply to them for some reason.

They call us up and ask us, "Before I join MailChimp, how can you guarantee that all my images will display, so that I don't have to click some button?"

Or, after they send their first campaign, they call us up with a frantic tone in their voice, and ask us why all their images are broken in their email program.

"Well, you know how you have to click the Show Images button for all the other emails you receive? Same goes for yours."

Images-Off is a real bummer for the new email marketer.

There are ways to deal with image blocking:

1. Get added to your recipients' address books, or "trusted senders" lists. This is otherwise known as "getting whitelisted"

• When people opt-in to your list, ask them to add your email address to their address books so that your future emails don't get accidentally spam filtered.
• This requires that you setup an email address for your newsletters, and that you stick to it. Don't change your reply-to address often.
• This also requires that your email campaigns have good, relevant content (make it worth their time to whitelist you)

2. Pay for email certification.

• If you're Goodmail certified, images are displayed ON by default in AOL, Yahoo, and more. Details at Goodmail
   
• If you're SenderScore certified, images and links are ON by default in Hotmail
   
• Certification in general requires that you send from your own dedicated IP address (so that emails from other businesses don't influence your reputation). So long as you have some good sending history under your belt, and pay the monthly fees (based on delivery volume), your IP gets added to a global "trusted" list.
• Typically, email certification is too expensive for most small business.
• More info on email certification

3. Use alt-text effectively.

• Alt-text is the description you add to your images when you code web pages. They get displayed while an image is loading. Because they're usually a "web-page-thing" they sometimes get ignored in HTML email. Big mistake. Always include alt-text, because it tells recipients, "Hey, there's an image here, and you should really want to see it" Here's an example from a recent Gap HTML email.
• Use CSS on your images to make alt-text look huge and colorful. It's a hack we detailed here.
• We've seen some marketers use paragraphs and paragraphs of alt-text on a single 1x1 pixel transparent .GIF at the top of the email. Once images are turned on, the image goes away, along with the alt-text. It's a hack, and we wouldn't go too far with it (spend more time on quality content, please) but it's an idea that might be useful for one of your campaigns. Keep it in your back pocket.

4. Don't worry too much.

• Images being turned off is a fact of life now. Most people are trained to click the button if they want to see your images (just make sure they know that there are actually images to be turned on).
• Always include a link to "View this email in your browser." MailChimp makes a copy of your newsletter, and links to it automatically for you. It's consistently in the top 3 most clicked links in all the campaigns we send to our own customers.

No matter what: always be relevant. Make it useful, and they will open. Send useless stuff, too often, and you'll start to be ignored.

HTML Email on Apple's iPhone

On Friday, our main engineer (and self-proclaimed Mac freak) Mark Armstrong went and got himself an iPhone. Forget that our whole company has a T-Mobile corporate account. The rogue has gone off and joined AT&T.

Anyways, we've been testing how HTML emails render on the iPhone, and so far it's been great. Follow the link to see the video, and some notes for email marketers...

http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/iphone_html_email.phtml

Related: Mark Brownlow's scoured YouTube and found lots of other cell phone videos here.

HTML Email Mistake: Image-based unsubscribe link

We've already talked about some of the dangers of image-based HTML email (See: Common HTML email design mistakes).

I'll say it again, though. All-image HTML emails look like spam, so they trigger spam filters. Even worse, most of them display with the images turned off by default, so your recipients don't always see your message (which is why you should always test your campaigns before you send them).

All this time, I've neglected to mention that it's a bad idea to make your unsubscribe link an image. Kinda thought that was common sense.

Well here's an article from Ken Magill at DIRECT magazine about a woman who reported a marketer to the New York attorney general’s office, because her email program never displayed the unsubscribe image:

http://directmag.com/magilla/image-based_email/

It even suggests that you might be breaking CAN-SPAM law if you send email marketing with an image as your unsub link.

One tip the provide is to also include the full URL of your unsubscribe link, just in case your clickable hyperlink doesn't work.

MailChimp users: the built-in templates we provide for your campaigns already have a text-based, one-click unsubscribe link embedded. If you want to display the full path for the unsubscribe URL, insert it with this tag: *|UNSUB|*

Zeldman's Rant Against HTML Email

When someone pointed out Jeffrey Zeldman's rant about HTML email to me a couple days ago, I thought, "Great. Another nut-job like this guy over here."

See, when we first started MailChimp back in 2001, anybody who Googled "HTML email" would get a link to our free email design guide for web designers---after the link to that nut job who proclaimed HTML email as the work of the devil. It bothered me back then, because we really saw HTML email as a potentially useful tool for business. The fact that people saw his page before ours pissed me off to no end. I tried everything to get my page ranked higher than that guy. I even tried making a page called, "7 reasons HTML email is a good thing" where I tried using the same META-tag tactics, but sort of in an opposite-dimension kinda way. Didn't work. Thankfully, Google (and Father Time) decided that guy's web page is no longer relevant (kinda like Zeldman's rant) and that content showing people how to actually do it right and get work done should float to the top. Oh yeah, and the invention of Google AdWords helped, too. Anyways.

Some people have pointed out that Zeldman's rant was a bit ironic, considering MailChimp had an ad running right there on his website. I got an email asking me if I was mad about the whole thing. Meh, we enjoyed the traffic. Truth is, we saw an uptick in signups from web designers who wanted to learn how to properly code and then check their HTML emails. I even got a few emails from people who were thankful for the rant, because that's how they discovered MailChimp. So all in all, the post was good (and a big thumbs up to The Deck).

Zeldman has since posted a followup, but it's not really worth reading if you're experienced in any way with email marketing. Basically, "Don't spam." And if you're a good designer, there's nothing new for you, either. Basically, "Don't do useless stuff." If you're a web designer, and you're interested in seeing some common mistakes that web designers make with HTML email, read this instead.

For what it's worth, I've had my own "nut-job" moments. There was a time, long ago, where I called any designer who used Flash in any way whatsoever a "Flashole." To my defense, back then Flash was primarily used for those annoying website intro pages (which I still believe was the single cause of the dot-com fallout). Nowadays, I quite like Flash, because it's being used for all kinds of useful stuff. I hate to admit it, but I'm even reading "Flash for Dummies" in my spare time.

I also called CSS a "pipe dream" back when it was first introduced, because it didn't work in all the browsers, and it was more work coming up w/hacks than just using friggin' tables and font tags. And I don't care what you say, but having a CSS file that's hundreds of lines long is not gonna help you maintain a website any faster, or save you time on redesign. Nowadays, I quite like CSS too (I still suck at it, but I like it). I should probably get myself a copy of Zeldman's book (cough).

If we've learned anything from all this, it's that posting silly rants only results in: 1) web traffic, and 2) showing people what an angry old fart you've become.

But XML---that's just plain stupid. Mark my words. It'll never, ever, ever catch on.

Image-based Spam On The Decline?

An article from PCWorld that suggests image-based spam might be on the decline.

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/004489.html

At MailChimp, we're still shocked at all the designers and marketers who are sending HTML emails that are nothing but big images. They don't seem to realize that an all-image legit email campaign looks the same as an all-image spam campaign.

Related: Stupid Email Design Mistakes

Welcome Email Ideas

Spotted this "welcome email" design from MailChimp user RealTruck.com

It's a nice idea that's not too hard to implement: when people subscribe to the RealTruck email newsletter, the welcome email contains a $10 off promo code:

How many of you actually took the time to customize your own welcome emails this way?

Do your welcome emails have nice gifts like this for your new subscribers, or do you just have the boilerplate, "welcome, this is the info we have on file, and click here to unsubscribe in the future, blah blah blah."

When I saw this welcome email, I got a little self-conscious of my own welcome emails for our MonkeyWrench newsletter. I went back to look at what I did, and boy was I embarrassed...

Here's what my own welcome email looked like:

Yaaaawn.

I guess I was more excited about customizing my beautiful HTML email templates and signup forms, so the poor little welcome email got no love.

I used the example from Realtrucks as my inspiration, plus these ideas from Mark Brownlow to totally redesign my welcome email (click for full screen):

The main thing I added (besides some color!) was a link to past issues of our newsletter. MailChimp makes that really easy (details here). 

Then I got to thinking - one reason I kept my welcome email so plain (besides laziness and stupidity) is I thought that cramming too many images and links into a "transactional" email would get it blocked by more spam filters.

So I ran my welcome email through our Inbox Inspector tool. It made it through every single spam filter, except---you guessed it---Postini. Postini said that it looked like "make money fast" spam. Here's my spam filter report:

Hmm, Postini thinks this is "make money fast spam"? I looked at my copy and noticed this line:

Maybe that is a little too spammy.

I removed that line, ran another Inbox Inspection, and it passed Postini!

I never would have known about Postini, let alone been able to get past it, without the Inbox Inspector. Unless, of course, I purchased my own Postini server for email testing. Big, big thank you to the geniuses at ReturnPath for coming up with this technology.

Do your welcome emails need some love? Are you missing out on the best opportunity to make a great first impression with your new subscribers? Do you know if your transactional emails make it past spam filters?

Background Images in HTML email

One of our customers recently designed a really nice email campaign that had a blue background, with white "title" text on top.

Here's a snippet of their design in Gmail:

Beautiful.

Even works in Outlook 2007:

But here it is in AOL 9:

Here's what went wrong...

For the title (MAKEUP LOOK OF THE WEEK!), they used an image composed of white text, and a transparent background. Besides the problem of "images turned off by default," this is risky because it depends on a dark background actually working, and showing through. And in HTML email, you can't really depend on anything working properly.

For the blue background, they used a tiling background file. Background images don't always work in HTML email. Furthermore, they specified the background image in their embedded CSS:

#content { background: url("images/email_bg.jpg") bottom left repeat-x; }

Embedded CSS is not very trustworthy anymore, especially in webmail clients (inline CSS is safest now).

To make matters worse, the url they used for the background image didn't use an absolute path, pointing to the file on their server.

Instead of:

url("images/email_bg.jpg")

It should've been:

url("http://www.myserver.com/images/email_bg.jpg")

So even if the embedded CSS worked, the image still wouldn't have been downloaded.

Fortunately, they designed the email to degrade gracefully, by assigning a solid blue bgcolor to their table:

<table id="content" bgcolor="#79C0F6" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">

Unfortunately, AOL 9 didn't accept the blue bgcolor, because the CSS (id=content), with the broken image path, appears to be overriding it.

By the way, same thing broke in Mail.com, Hotmail, Comcast, Outlook 2003, Outlook Express, Yahoo, Thunderbird, and on and on. In fact, according to their Inbox Inspector report, the blue bgcolor only worked in Gmail, Outlook 2007, and---get this---Lotus Notes.

We re-ran the report after fixing the absolute path, and it rendered properly in all the email programs. If the background-image wasn't accepted (as with Outlook 2007), the bgcolor was properly swapped out.

Showcase: Crickskipper Email Newsletter

I can't stop staring at these illustrations. They're spooky, but cool.

Aaron Nather, aka Crickskipper, uses MailChimp to update subscribers on his latest artwork. He's customized our 2-column built-in template to match his very unique style.

From Aaron: "You guys have a great product that's far exceeded my expectations.  I'm blown away by the fact that I can manage all of this myself with about two hours of prep time per email."

Spam Filters Need Spam Filters Now

By now, most email marketers know you should avoid using "spammy" phrases like "FREE! CLICK NOW!" or the spam filters will trash your message.

But did you know that before your email even gets to a spam filter, it has to get through a gatekeeper? Yep, spam is so bad, that spam filters now need spam filters to help them.

These gatekeepers kinda look like this:

Looks vicious, doesn't it? They're all over the place. ISPs use them. Large corporations use them. Small businesses are starting to use them.

What's really scary is they all talk to each other. It's how they learn what "spam" is, and who should be blocked (Gulp - are they talking about you right now?).

That's a picture of IronPort's Email Security Appliance. If it thinks your email is spam, it'll gobble it up and fart its remains into cyberspace before your recipient's puny little spam filter even gets a chance to look for the word "V1AGRA". It won't even waste the energy to tell anybody about it (like in a bounce report).

Ever send to your email list and wonder where 5-10% of the emails seem to disappear off to? Ever wonder why the numbers don't seem to add up in your deliverability reports? It was probably one of these big, mean appliances (ReturnPath says its closer to 20% in this PDF Report).

If IronPort thinks your email is "not spam" then it lets your email through (but it'll still get analyzed by a content-based spam filter). And that's when your "avoid spammy content" tactics finally come into play.

To learn more about how IronPort works, they've got an eyebrow-raising demo you should watch. Click the tab at the bottom of the movie, to skip to the "anti-spam" section. Watch the demo

How the heck does this server know what spam is? Your own recipients teach it. When you send an email to your list, and someone on your list thinks it's spam, or doesn't remember opting-in to your list, or if you purchased a list from someone, that person can report you to SpamCop (which was purchased by IronPort in 2003, and is now called "SenderBase"). Get enough SpamCop complaints, and they'll propogate your data to all the IronPort servers around the world, letting everyone know you're a spammer:

Incidentally, your email service provider should be registered at SenderBase, so they can properly investigate every single complaint generated in response to their users' campaigns. At MailChimp, everyone on our staff personally receives copies of any complaints that come in, so we can go suspend the sender's account and investigate immediately.

IronPort is only one of many, many email firewalls, gateways, and security appliances you, as an email marketer, should learn about. Also see:

• Barracuda Networks
• Postini
• MessageLabs
• Brightmail ("9 of the top 12 U.S. ISPs use Brightmail")

All of those big, mean, ruthless "gatekeepers" rely on "reputation" scores to block emails before they even get to the content-based spam filters.

So you really want to make sure your reputation is good. How can you do this?

• Never send spam.
• Don't buy lists. Don't use lists that other people gave you.
• Only send to lists of people who know you, and requested emails from you. Otherwise, if you want to get the word out about your company, pick up the phone and call your prospects, or pick up a pen and write them. Or, email them one at a time (see "Definition of spam" and specifically the word "bulk"), from your own email program.
  

Assuming you're not sending spam, your email design is a huge factor in getting you blocked by one of these gatekeepers:

• When you send emails, always include a "How we got your email" reminder. MailChimp's built-in templates include that information for you, with our *|LIST:DESCRIPTION|* tag. This tag is automatically replaced with the survey information that you provide each time you setup a list in MailChimp.
• Your email designs have to be reputable looking. Get sloppy, and people won't trust your opt-out link, and report you instead. See how one designer got blacklisted from his design.
• Always include a one-click unsubscribe link in every campaign you send (MailChimp adds this for you when you use our built-in templates. If you use your own designs, we'll give you a code snippet).
• Haven't contacted your list in a while? Or is this your first campaign? Send an introduction email. Remind them of who you are, or you'll get a big surge in complaints, and wind up on all those ugly blacklists out there.
• Sometimes, you're not the one who got you blacklisted. It was someone else on the server that you used. If you used a shared email marketing service like MailChimp, where thousands of people are sending emails from the same IP, you're at risk. That's why MailChimp has lots of IPs that we send from, but more importantly, we have a human staff of reviewers who pre-screen all new users before they're allowed to use our system. If a user still manages to generate spam complaints, our abuse desk can shut the user down immediately, and re-route email to our other IPs, while we deal with the blacklist service. This is how we manage to send millions of emails every day from our system. If that still sounds too risky, or if you hate sharing, get your own dedicated IP address from MailChimp.
• But if you think you can send junk, get reported, then switch to a new email server, you are sadly mistaken. Once you get reported, your company's name and domain name are on the lists. They'll know to block ALL emails with your name in it from now on, no matter who sends it, or where it came from. This is why affiliate marketing programs can be so risky. Imagine thousands of sloppy email senders (your affiliates) buying lists and sending emails with your company's domain name in them.
  
• Still want to make absolutely sure your campaigns won't get blocked? Consider our new Inbox Inspector feature. It checks the most common spam filters, plus MessageLabs, Postini, and IronPort.
• Want to continually monitor your reputation? There are services for that (ReturnPath has their SenderScore Reputation Monitor).

Want to find out what your (or your client's) reputation is? Here's one way:

Plug your domain name into this lookup service

They'll tell you if it's on any of the blacklists that they search. If it is, then follow instructions on how to get off their lists (tip: you are guilty until proven innocent, every email you send them will probably be posted on a public forum, and you will be asked for proof of opt-in for each complaining recipient).

Thanks to these big email appliances, it doesn't matter what email service provider or email server you send from, or whether or not your content has spammy words in it. If your name is on these lists, your email won't even get delivered.

Nowadays, it's your email reputation that precedes you.

Inbox Inspector: One Click Email Campaign Testing

Last week, we launched a new feature in MailChimp (in "stealth mode"), and asked a handful of our customers to try it and give us some feedback. So far, this is what we're hearing:

"It's Christmas in April"

"This is cool as sh--"

"Passed the spam filter check by 100%! Yippee!"

What is the MailChimp Inbox Inspector?

It lets you check your HTML email campaigns in all the major email programs, spam filters, and server firewalls in one easy click...

Basically, whenever you send HTML email campaigns, you have to check it in a lot of email programs to make sure that 1) it rendered properly, and 2) it made it past the crazy spam filters.

Kind of like how you test web pages in different browsers. But 10 times worse. You have to download, install, and maintain Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Lotus, and you have to go sign up for accounts with Yahoo, Hotmail, Mail.com, and you have to pay for accounts with Comcast, Earthlink, Bellsouth, and on and on. Then there's the server firewalls, like Postini, Spam Assassin, MessageLabs, and more. Oh, and Gateway servers, like Ironport. If you're lucky enough to have the budget for all that (about 8 grand, then 1 grand a year to maintain) then you send yourself lots of test campaigns to all those accounts, then repeat the process until your email works the way you want.

Yeah, it's a real pain. It can take hours to properly test an email campaign. In fact, a lot of people just design their email, click send, and pray to the email gods that it makes it through.

Now, you can click one button, and MailChimp will do all the testing for you in minutes:

Lots more screenshots at:

http://www.mailchimp.com/add-ons/inboxinspector/

We did this by partnering with ReturnPath, one of the most trusted names in email marketing and deliverability. These guys have a solid product, and more importantly, great customer service (why we chose them). And they're constantly adding more email programs and spam filters to check your emails (they've just added 15 more screenshots that we've got to integrate---slow down, guys!).

When you click the new "Inbox Inspection" button in MailChimp, here's what kind of reports we'll generate:

• Screenshots of your campaign in 17 major email programs
• Zoom-in views of where your email scrolls on a 1024x768 screen (you'll be shocked how little your recipients see before scrolling)
• Spamminess scores, but not just based on simple keywords. We all know that "CLICK HERE!" is risky. Inbox Inspector actually passes the email through real filters and  server firewalls, so you can see how their complex algorithms truly score your emails.
• Content assessment reports (we look for broken code, typos, etc)
• Printable report that you can send to your client or designer

Anyways, we'll be launching it sometime this week, so look for it in under your MailChimp Account Tab, in the "Add Ons" section.

It'll save you TONS of frustration, prevent embarassing mistakes, and best of all, it's cheaper than what you'd charge for one hour of your time.

More Information at: http://www.mailchimp.com/add-ons/inboxinspector/

Try MailChimp free at: http://www.mailchimp.com/tryit.phtml

AlohaCoconut.com's Easter Egg Hunt Campaign

MailChimp user Aloha Coconut's "Easter Egg Hunt" campaign caught our eye. It's a creative, simple-to-implement idea that anybody can use on their site: hunt around for Easter eggs, and get promo codes that you can use for discounts on Aloha Coconut products. And you get a free Luau ducky with every order? This is too good to be true!

You're already looking for eggs in that picture below, aren't you? Not there---you'll have to go to AlohaCoconut.com. And you'll have to do it by 8pm today. Pink (15% off) was the best I could find while clicking around their site. Kudos to them for also using a blog for their marketing.

Here's what their campaign looked like (they modified one of MailChimp's built-in templates):

Design Like The Pros

As a followup to our previous Valentine's Day post, I thought I'd put together an example of how MailChimp customers can use our handy built-in templates to design an email that looks just as good as those professionally designed email campaigns over at Newsletter Archive.

I know a lot of you are web designers. And for web designers, "built-in templates" sound  cool---for you to poop on. But we're a little different. We don't supply you with 200 pre-built designs (all of them fugly). We give you basic layouts that you can modify inside a design tool (think Photoshop, but for HTML email).

So I picked a campaign, and in the sincerest form of flattery, I imitated it with our HTML email design tool...

I found an email campaign I kinda liked: Peet's Coffee. It's a nice design, but I picked it mainly because I really enjoyed a coffee I had there about 6 years ago on a very cold, icy day just outside Boston. Some things just stick in my brain. Don't know why.

Anyway, here's what their email looks like (click the thumbnail to zoom in):

So first, I hopped over to iStockPhoto to look for some graphics I could use for my version: "Peekaboo Coffee & Tea." iStockphoto has lots of cheap stock photography. You can also try LuckyOliver.com. Lots of great resources are sprouting up where you can buy royalty-free photos for $1. I mean, just think of any image you want, and you can probably get it for a buck now.

iStockPhoto actually has a Valentine's Day themed section, which was nice and convenient. Got myself a picture of a rose, and made a splashy promo graphic like the one in Peet's campaign.

Then I logged into MailChimp, and clicked on "My Templates" to start building my "Peekaboo" Valentine's email template.

If you're not a MailChimp customer, you might check out this quick Movie Demo to see how MailChimp works. That'll help you understand the stuff I'm about to get into below...

I selected the "Postcard Layout" from the library. Here's what that looks like by default (I've highlighted all the things you can customize):

On the surface, the postcard template looks pretty simple. You setup your basic background colors, fonts, and upload a logo. Then the template is finished, and you save it. Then, whenever you assemble your content, you upload a big splashy promo graphic (where the gray box is above), and enter a little descriptive text below it.

But if you know how to code a little HTML, you can actually tweak that template to do some really cool stuff.

Here's what I tweaked:

1. First, my background colors. I changed the Body, Header, and footer to white (#FFFFFF in nerd speak)
2. I went into the top bar area, where you'd normally see our "Email not displaying properly?" link, and removed it altogether. Then I uploaded my logo graphic instead. Sounds weird, because normally you'd upload that in the "Logo graphic" section in the template designer. But I did it here because the top bar slot lets me go into "Source" mode, and input my own HTML. That allowed me to code my image map for the top navigation in my email.
   
3. In the slot where the logo would normally go, I just uploaded a transparent 1x1 shim.gif. It's a hack, but it works.
4. After setting my font styles, the template's done. I save my work as "Peekaboo  Promo Template", and exit the designer.
5. When it's time to create a campaign, I click the "Create New Campaign" button on the MailChimp Dashboard.
6. I select my Peekaboo Template, and walk through the steps in the Campaign Builder.
7. I upload my splashy promo graphic, then click "Next" to enter content below it.
8. In the next step, most people would just enter text into our WYSIWYG editor. But since I know some HTML, I switch to "Source" mode, so I can play with HTML. The "Source" view is where you can go nuts with our templates and do some creative stuff you might not have thought about while using the standard WYSIWYG buttons.
   
9. In "Source" view, I code a simple table with 4 cells, and some light padding and spacing.
10. Then I switch back to "Normal" view, and use the WYSIWYG editor toolbar to upload each product graphic.

That's it. The final campaign looks like this (click to zoom in):

If you'd like to see a side-by-side comparison, click this:

I'll be posting more examples soon.

Valentine's Email Marketing Ideas

Here's an idea for your upcoming Valentine's Day email campaigns. Go to Newsletter Archive and do a search for "valentine" to see what all the big guys are doing:

http://www.newsletterarchive.org/search/valentine

Image Based Spam

We've seen a lot of graphic designers send HTML emails that are nothing but a big, gigantic JPG they exported from Photoshop. They look beautiful, but the problem is they also look like image-based spam (read more about image-based spam here, here and here)...

But modern spam filters (like Spam Assassin) are catching on to this tactic. They use algorithms that read emails for content, sender, header info, sloppy HTML coding, and more (here's a list of criteria it scans for). So when spammers send image-based spam, or when legitimate email marketers send a promotion that's nothing but one gigantic graphic, here's what happens:

So don't send HTML email that's nothing but a big fat graphic. Even if the graphic looks really, really awesome. Always include some text that spam filters can read. Just pretend your recipients can't see images (they'll be turned off by default anyways). What content could you include that might motivate them to click the "download images" link?

View This Email In Your Browser

I just got this email invitation from AiMA, and the link at the top of their email caught my eye (see below).

As a lot of you know by now, email programs automatically turn images in HTML email off by default. So some marketers like to place a copy of their HTML email on their server, and let people click this link to view the message in their browser. In fact, lots of your tech-savvy recipients will actually prefer to click that link, because they know that by turning on images, you'll track the open (and they're very protective of their privacy).

Anyways, for the longest time, I've always put, "Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser" at the top of my emails. I think I like AiMA's wording better.

Except I'd probably refrain from saying "click here" in my emails. Last time I used "click here" in my emails, my deliverability scores plummeted.  Maybe something more like, "This message contains graphics. If you don't see them, view our email in your browser"

And if you've ever wondered what kind of words or phrases spam filters look for, here are some articles we've posted in the past:

• Funny Spam Assassin Criteria
• How Spam Filters Work (and how to avoid them)

Stock Halloween Photography for $1

Halloween's just around the corner, so a lot of you are probably looking around for some good Halloween imagery for your emails and websites.

Check out iStockPhoto, where you can get some very nice work for $1 a pop.

Showcase: Happen, Inc. Email Newsletter

We just had to showcase this MailChimp customer. Happen, Inc. is a non-profit organization that holds art workshops for children. For example, their "Happen's Toy Lab" has children picking out a bunch of spare toy parts, and assembling them to make cool new ones (check out the gallery in their "Toy Zoo").

The Happen Inc. email newsletter is fun and simple (and you know we like fun and simple around here). Love all the creative  illustrations and logos.

See more email showcases here...

How AOL Designs Their HTML Emails

We've talked in the past about designing for AOL's extremely tiny (194 pixels!) preview pane.

So we thought we'd post an actual HTML email that AOL sent to its members. Considering it's from their CEO, you know it's going to be optimally designed for AOL, right?

Here's what the email looked like in their preview pane:

Notice they made their logo aligned left, and it fits completely within the narrow preview pane. Also notice how they didn't use any fixed-width tables (like most of us do these days). It's just a couple of simple paragraphs that happen to wrap fluidly within the window. His entire message can be read in their itty-bitty preview pane.

Here's how it looked when opened up in full view:

Kinda ugly how the text goes past the logo at the top, but hey---it works. We like simple. You might consider making a template like this just as your own "company letterhead." Use it to send quick alerts to customers and stuff. No need to go crazy with HTML and graphics and tables within tables within tables (not all the time, at least).

Showcase: Emmaus

Some pretty big companies and agencies use MailChimp, so we're used to seeing some really slick, professionally designed email campaigns.

That's why this email campaign from Emmaus caught our eye.

We loved the simplicity and hand-drawn style of their "beloved CropDuster" logo. Click around their website and watch the  Cropduster monster come to life (or my favorite: just watch his arm slowly detach and fall to the ground).

Pure geeeenius.

Showcase: Studio BenBen

Ever come across one of those design websites, where they've got so many cool little icons and doohickies that you could just sit there all day long and click on stuff? Ben Schlitter's website is one of those sites. It's fun, addictive, and the attention to detail is amazing. And it's just a personal portfolio site! What's really cool is he sells his work in little sketch books and posters.

Anyways, Ben used MailChimp to send his first email newsletter, and we thought we'd showcase it here for everyone to see.

Spam And Junk Email Buttons Preferred Method To Unsubscribe

Found this on Tamara Gielen's blog, who found it at ReturnPath:

In a recent Return Path survey, nearly 79% of consumers admitted that they have hit the "spam" or "junk" email button to get rid of email they don't want. And nearly 37% do it as a way to unsubscribe from things they had asked to receive.

Good grief. Last time someone did this kinda report, it was more like 13%.

Here are some tips for avoiding false spam reports from our MailChimp abuse center.

Related articles for preventing false spam reports:

• Email design tip - place unsubscribe links in your header
• Why you should use the double opt-in process
• Setting expectations with your "thank-you screens" and "welcome emails"
• How MailChimp automatically unsubscribes recipients who report you for spamming in AOL and Hotmail

Spam Assassin Reads Comment Tags?

We recently ran our free HTML email templates through Spam Assassin's filters, and noticed that we were being penalized for a few items (learn more about Spam Assassin here). Most of them were caused by some "placeholder" text like, "free" and "preview," but that content would be replaced by the end user anyways.

But we noticed that our comment tags were getting flagged as spammy too! If you're a coder, you should know about this.

See, in our HTML email templates, we include all kinds of descriptive comment tags for users, so that they know why we coded things the way we did (because making HTML work for email is really odd sometimes). Normally, these comment tags are "invisible" unless you view the raw source code of your HTML. They're just notes to help other coders know where and why you placed your code.

I was a little surprised to learn that these tags were actually being read, and scored, by Spam Assassin. Kinda reminds me of this crazy Calc5 professor I had, who actually deducted points for my bad handwriting.

Some examples of comment tags that got us flagged:

Example #1:

<!-- /// CSS goes here in case the /HEAD tags get stripped \\\ -->

Example #2:

<!-- /// Sometimes, BODY tags get stripped. This table is for background color when that happens.  \\\ -->

* We got a 2-point penalty for "SHOUTING" because of these comments. Switching "CSS," "HEAD," and "BODY" to lowercase cleared the penalty.

Example#3:

<!-- /// footer area with contact info and opt-out link \\\ -->

I used this comment tag to point out the proper place to stick their unsubscribe link (in the header and footer of the email). In turn, I got a 1-point penalty for using the term, "opt-out." Since I had that in 2 locations in my email, this resulted in a total of 2 points added to my spamminess score. Guess too many spammers use "opt-out" in their messages. Switching to "unsubscribe" helped. Note that the word, "unsubscribe" still gets flagged by other spam filters. Some people choose to use the word, "remove" instead, or "take me off this list." Just don't go nuts with the old thesaurus, because that's bound to look even more fishy to the spam filters.

Overall, we're not the types who fret about every little point. Just like money, you can be "penny wise, pound foolish" about spam points too. For the most part, you shouldn't be too concerned. As Spam Assassin says, "We filter spam. If you don't send spam, you've got nothing to worry about."

But if you send content with any financial information, or if you had a special "free giveaway," or if you send pharmaceutical related emails, every tiny fraction of a point matters. No need for your comment tags to skew your score.

FYI, we've modified all our free HTML email templates.

Related links:

• Tips from SpamAssassin
• Copy-paste your code into this free "Spamminess Checker"
• Funny SpamAssassin criteria

 

 

Showcase: Buk America

"A BüK is an inexpensive pamphlet—just $1.49—containing one provocative essay, short story, portfolio of pictures, collection of poems, or other surprising entertainment, readable in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee."

BüK uses MailChimp to send some pretty fun email campaigns.

Every holiday, they do something creative at the top of their emails with the latest BüK they've published. Makes you kinda look forward to what they'll do next. Here are some example HTML email campaigns they've done for:

• Christmas
• Valentines
• April Tax Season (actually, I made that up, but it woulda been appropriate)
• Independence Day

You can find more HTML email showcases from MailChimp customers at:
http://showcase.mailchimp.com

Email Showcase: Rooftop Comedy

From time to time, we like to highlight some of our customers' cool campaigns on our site. This latest showcase is from Rooftop Comedy. If you're a fan of Chris Porter ("Why is Willy Wonka on the stage?") on the Last Comic Standing TV show, you'll like this campaign.

Really cool because:

1. They use a tease to a video in their email.
2. It only uses one image. One.

It's uncensored, with lots and lots of inappropriate language and it's so politically incorrect.

So yeah, it's really funny.

About Rooftop Comedy:
Rooftop Comedy was founded by one comic, some internet geeks, and former broadcasters. We're doing something that hasn't been done before: bringing live comedy, swearing and all, to a larger audience.

If you've got an email campaign you think should live forever in our showcase, just let us know.

Showcase: HoveringObject.com

Being an email marketing tool for "design-it-yourselfers" has its perks.

Mainly, it attracts a lot of very cool customers. One of our favorite examples is HoveringObject.com.

By day, Mark Brabant is a self-employed graphic designer. By night, he sells t-shirts and screenprinted serigraphs that "deal with the paranormal in a tasteful, serious way." His "crop circle" t-shirts are pretty darn cool, and those posters of the hovering dog and cow are great (we're ordering some for our office here at The Rocket Science Group).

HoveringObject's Email Newsletter

Mark uses MailChimp to send email newsletters to his customers and friends whenever he has new work posted in his gallery. Here's an example of one of his emails.

It's yet another nice example of a modification to one of our free HTML email templates.

Want to see more examples of our creative MailChimp customers? We've showcased cranky pizza makers, kickboxers, fasion designers, universities, tea bars, and more in our Customer Showcase.

Nice "ALT TEXT" Hack for HTML Email

I got a couple email newsletters today that I had to highlight here for our MailChimp users. The first was from Network Solutions. You know, one of those typical, "your domain name is going to expire in 50 years, so you better renew right now" messages. Those guys really believe in early warnings. The other was from Victoria's Secret. Yeah, say what you will about the last one. But Victoria's Secret has got some pretty crafty HTML email coders, (yes, that's why I subscribe---to read the HTML, and pass what I've learned on to you).

Anyways, you know how some email applications block images in HTML email? It's a nice security feature that protects your privacy and all, but it can be really annoying for legitimate email marketers who send email with images and photos of their products.

Well, Network Solutions and Victoria's Secret did some pretty neat stuff with their  HTML email code, and it's worth a post...

Normally, when you send an HTML email with graphics, most email applications block the graphics from displaying. If you trust the sender, you press a "Show Images" button to un-hide the graphics.

In Mozilla Thunderbird (which is a great, free email app, by the way), images are blocked, and if they have any "ALT Text" assigned to them, it gets displayed (instead of a big, "broken image" icon, like Microsoft's Outlook 2003 does).

This can actually be kind of annoying, because people might not realize your logo graphic is even missing when they see your alt text there instead (here's an example from a previous post).

But two email campaigns I just received did a great job using this issue in Thunderbird to their advantage...

The first I want to highlight is Victoria's Secret. I received their email for their 2006 Bikini Line (remember, I'm reading this stuff for research here), and I noticed that with images blocked, they had a few lines of text at the top of the message...

But when I clicked the "Show Images" button in Thunderbird, the "ALT Text" disappeared:

That line of text at the top of the email ("sexy new bikinis...") is actually the "ALT Text" for a transparent, invisible little "shim.gif". Neat-o.

For those of you who aren't that experienced with HTML, "Shim Gifs" are transparent graphic files, commonly used by web designers, as a way to force table cells to be a specific width. They're totally invisible.  And "ALT Text" is just some text that you can assign to a web page image, which will display in case the image won't download. Google 'em for more info.

That's a pretty nice hack for HTML email, if you ask me. Kudos to those VS email people. I don't know how they get any work done around there.

Okay, on to the next example...

Network Solutions sent me this email, and again, Mozilla Thunderbird blocked all the images in it. But NetSol used CSS on that logo graphic to assign it a huge font-size, making the ALT Text nice and big in Thunderbird...

 

Click here if you want to see what the NetSol email looked like after pressing "Show Images."

I decided to give this a try myself. I constructed my own HTML email where I placed a transparent shim.gif at the top, with an "intro paragraph" as my alt text. I also placed  our MailChimp logo, with the alt text set to say, "MailChimp."

Then I used CSS to assign BIG font sizes (and even colors) to the alt text.

First, here's what my HTML email looks like without any CSS assigned to the logo file, and without any shim.gif at the top. You can see how it just says, "MailChimp" in really plain, black text, instead of my beautiful chimp logo.

Then I applied some CSS to the alt text:

Here's what the email looked like in Thunderbird with images blocked.

And here it is with images displayed. Note how I got the logo's alt text to be our MailChimp gold color, and how the shim.gif's alt text is ginormous and brown (um, I don't recommend this for any real campaigns).

Here's the email's HTML code if you want to view the source (opens a new window, then right-click, "view source" in your browser).

Pretty nifty, huh? There's probably a lot more you can do with CSS and alt-text and shim.gifs, but keep in mind this stuff won't work on all email applications. So you shouldn't spend too much time coding CSS for alt-text, when you could just do it to the actual CONTENT of your message. But if you have an HTML email that's mostly graphics, you can use these tricks to at least get the Mozilla users to click that "Show Images" button.

Opt-in Thank You Pages - Setting Expectations

When someone signs up for your email newsletter, your "Thank you for signing up" confirmation page should set expecations (especially if you're using the double opt-in method, and people should be expecting a confirmation email and activation link). You can use the "thank you page" to tell recipients how often they should expect your newsletters, and also to ask them to "whitelist" your email address (so you won't get mistakenly spam filtered). Incidentally, MailChimp lets you totally customize your "opt-in confirmation" page any way you want.

I recently signed up for an email newsletter, and thought this was a nice example of an opt-in thank you page, with lots of explanation about spam filters and whitelisting.

Personalizing Email Newsletters with MailChimp *|MERGE|* Tags

If you're a programmer, web developer, or owner of an e-commerce website, you probably already have your own opt-in customer database, and you just need a simple HTML email delivery and tracking tool.

That's where MailChimp shines. You can segment your list however you choose, then export it into tab-delimited format. Then copy-paste your data into MailChimp, and click send.

What makes this really cool is that you can paste an UNLIMITED number of columns into MailChimp, then personalize your campaigns any way you want by inserting a *|MERGE|* tag that corresponds to each column from your database. Follow the link below for an example campaign from a MailChimp user...

Brent Young, from SwapDrive, runs an online backup service called, @Backup. He uses MailChimp to send transactional emails to his customers.

But he doesn't just personalize his emails with the easy, "Dear FNAME" stuff (which any monkey could do). He really goes all out, and typically pastes over 20 columns from his customer database into MailChimp, then uses our *|MERGE|* tags to add data like:

• Customized upgrade offers specific to each customer
• "Customer Since" date
• Machine ID
• Renewal date
• The vendor that referred the customer

To learn more about how our *|MERGE|* tags work, read the knowledge base article here.

Here's a screenshot of one of his emails (look at all those *|MERGE|* tags!):

Tis the Season for Holiday E-Cards

If you're a creative agency, 'tis the season for sending fun, interactive email cards to all your clients. Some old business fogies say "e-cards aren't as good as hand-written cards." Nonsense. We think e-cards can be waaaay better. It's easy to sign your name on an old fashioned "offline" card, or write some boring, handwritten letter (yaaawn). But nothing says, "I really care" like spending hours and hours crafting your own e-card masterpiece. "Animation, tweening and sound files" are the new "Elmer's glue, crayons, and glitter." They love this stuff! Just remember to use the safety scissors, kids.

Innersync Studios sent us a great holiday e-card, and we just had to post it for all to see. It's cute and interactive (I just love the way they drew the eyeballs), and it made me chuckle. They used Flash to give it interactivity and sound. And instead of embedding the flash movie right in the message (something you can technically do with HTML email, but most anti-virus applications will block it), they just placed a simple "You've received an Innersync e-card" link in the message, which takes you to a landing page with the flash movie. Click here to see the e-card (turn up your volume)...

And it's not too late to send an e-card, either. Here at The Rocket Science Group (the nerds behind MailChimp) we typically schedule ours to send on New Year's Day. Remember, we're just a bunch of geeks, so don't laugh when you see this old example. Happy holidays, everybody!

Double Opt-in "Thank You Screens"

I'm an opt-in freak. I'll opt-in to just about anything, just to see what happens (thank goodness for Gmail accounts). I mostly do it for MailChimp research. I'm going to start posting screenshots of things I find here. Maybe you'll get some ideas for your own email marketing efforts.

First example is New Scientist. I recently stumbled upon their article called, "Meditation Builds the Brain" and saw that these guys have a free newsletter, which uses the double-opt-in method...

When you use the double opt-in method, people submit their email address, then you send them a confirmation email where they must click a link in order to "confirm" their subscription. If the recipient doesn't click to confirm, they're not added to the list. This is the way to go nowadays, and it's the only way MailChimp's list management tool works.

Your Double-Opt-In Thank You Screen Sets Expectations

Anyways, when someone enters their email address on your website form, you take them to a "Thank You page," and remind them to 1) Check their email inbox, and 2) Click the confirmation link. You might also tell them when to expect the email, who it'll be from, how to check their spam filters, etc (BTW, MailChimp lets you totally customize the look and feel, HTML, and CSS of your Thank You page).

I thought this was a nice "Thank You" screen from New Scientist's double opt-in process. They really cover a lot of ground here, but it was all very quick and easy to understand...

Visa Extras Email Notifications

Are you signed up for any credit card "bonus points" or "rewards" programs? I'm signed up for both American Express Rewards, and Visa Extras. The difference in "experience" is amazing, and it's all thanks to email marketing.

I have no friggin clue how many points I have with American Express, or what I can do with them. Every month, AMEX sends me my points balance, but it's attached to their paper BILL ("Here are your points, now pay up!"). And it still doesn't tell me what my points are worth. Once a year, AMEX sends me a shiny catalog in the mail, but it's full of plasma screen TVs, yachts, and Faberge eggs. Maybe someday I'll accumulate 3 googillian points for that set of golf clubs. Thanks for nuthin, AMEX.

On the other hand, there's Visa Extras...

Every month or so (I can't remember how frequently they send, but it's pleasantly non-annoying), I get an email newsletter from Visa. Actually, it's co-branded to appear as if it's from my local bank, which is a nice little touch (you can swap out partner logos in your HTML email with MailChimp's *|MERGETAGS|*, by the way).

Anyway, Visa's email newsletter (click here to see a screenshot) always includes a brief statement of how many points I've accumulated, and they sprinkle the email with nice little logos for online stores where I can redeem my points. They also feature logos from shops that provide "40 points for every dollar you spend." All those little logos tell me in the blink of an eye what my points are worth: movie tickets, a book from Barnes & Noble, maybe a little medicine from my local CVS Pharmacy.

The result is that unlike those mysterious AMEX Rewards, I have this feeling that I can actually use my Visa Extras.

So when I'm at the grocery store, I always use my Visa bank card instead of my AMEX card, because I want that little number in my Visa Extras email to grow the next time I see it. And whenever the Visa email arrives in my inbox, I immediately open it to see where my points balance is. Yeah, I'm a sucker for points now.

Gut Feelings Add Up

Maybe it's the fact that I can actually see a "cause and effect" relationship better with Visa. Maybe it's the fact that "AMEX rewards equals evil black and white paper bill," while "Visa Extras equals bright, colorful email, with happy people." I dunno what it is, but my gut tells me that Visa just feels better.

American Express may have a nice email design for their Rewards program, but I'll never know. That's because 5 years ago, I signed up for an online account with AMEX. All I remember is that I spent lots of time on the phone with their customer service people to make it work (if you've got an online account with AMEX, you probably know what I mean). Plus, after they finally got my account working, they spammed the heck outta my inbox. I had to unsubscribe from each department's list as they sent them. Took another call to just get off all their lists for good. That was 5 years ago, so I hope they've changed by now. These days, AMEX sends me email account statements for my merchant and business accounts---but I never open them, because I can never remember my logins and passwords (AMEX requires crazy usernames and insanely restrictive passwords, for EACH account).

AMEX bad, Visa Good. AMEX old, Visa young. AMEX black and white, Visa color. AMEX Faberge eggs, Visa Apple Store.

Email Example

Below is a sample of a Visa Extras email. I edited it a little, so if it looks like an MTV censored gangsta video, that's just me trying to hide some personal info...

Click to enlarge:

Showcase: Textile Museum of Canada Email

The Textile Museum of Canada uses MailChimp to keep its members updated on exhibitions, news, events, and programs. We love all the beautiful, intriguing photos in their  messages---something you can only do with HTML email. Our favorite is their "A Terrible Beauty" exhibition, with all the slimy insects arranged in patterns that are "...subtly disturbing, yet surprisingly beautiful..."

Showcase: Cranky Pat's Pizzeria & Pub Email Newsletter