I recently noticed an advertisement for an email marketing solution… The ad copy went something like this:
“Flash improves your email marketing campaigns effectiveness”
I am not sure who on earth came up with that – OR – if it was automatically generated, but it most definitely does not. On that topic, here are a couple of things you should avoid when creating your email campaigns.
- Flash
You will experience compatibility issues along with security warning issues. If you want to include a movie you can include a screen capture of the movie and then have the movie launch in their browser once they click on the image. - Javascript
You will experience compatibility issues along with security warning issues. - Forms
I realize some people may disagree with this – but forms are not fully compatible and they can trigger some security warnings. - Background Images
Background images are very tricky if you wish to get maximum compatibility. Outside of placing a background image in the body tag you will experience a number of issues. - Setting a background color without using a wrapping div
Many web based email clients will not show your body background color. Thus if you are requiring a background color we suggest to also include a wrapping div around your content that is also set to have the same background color that your body tag has.
These are just a couple of the things you should keep in mind when creating your next email campaign.
This is part of a series of email design articles. Subscribe to our blog to be notified as we release additional email design tips.
