This is an interesting concept to ponder...do you go with text and try to look casual and normal or HTML and look more business-like and professional?  I guess it depends on your field, for instance, an insurance company probably doesn't need too much flash to sell, it is something that most people realize they need anyway.  Just a thought.

Evan

www.Leads4Insurance.com

Since I began sending out emails some 6 years ago, making me an old timer in this space, I have found that html emails produce the best response.

I agree with you Mike you've got to offer a variety of formats for viewers to select. I assume Ashley's point is based on the reality that most email campaigns will be a single message, rather than aggregated.

Recently we have been trying some new formats of our twice weekly BusinessinBerkshire newsletter. We have asked the audience to tell us what they think. We have not quite begged, but strongly indicated a deep desire to know what they think... as anyone with experience at trying to get feedback will know it is slow coming!

Anyway, our previous format for the last 2 years (we've been sending the newsletter for 4.5 years now)  was 650 pixels wide, first column 400, second around 200. Each article had an approx 200 pixel image, a few words underneath and click for more on both the image and below the abstract. The newsletter was up to 30 stories high, so contained 60ish links.

See the 2nd August copy here...

New Format 23rd August

As a new format we are trying 3 columns to reduce the height. The feedback is proving positive but the activity levels are down. The 2nd Aug email above had 45 links achieve 575 click throughs, the revised version for 23rd has seen 80 links achieve 413 clicks.

Now both are in real time, so the first has had the chance to be viewed more often, it is holiday time and so fewer people around.

My gut tells me that it's the white space thing. Our email is aimed at business people and they like space to consider, they are regular readers and so take the time to scroll down the whole email (sometimes we stick a nugget at the bottom and it will get the 2nd most number of clicks!)

We have been evolving a Kids in Berkshire email and it seems that kids like intense. Lots of little boxes with copy I can't read is where they are at!

It could be an age thing but probably more of a pace of life thing...

The previous format is easier to manage... so we'll try the revised format for a few weeks and perhaps try some other formats to see what response they get. But we will not mess around forever, it's fun for a short time but could become annoying for everyone!!

As regard the plain text version. Our system will sniff out what our readers systems can handle and drop off the format that suits them. If we want to track the plain text then our Emaillabs system will add a string of code that we can track. We prefer to give the reader a no tracking link so it looks normal and doesn't scare them off. We know that much fewer use the plain text version and they tend to be techies as most of us don't know what to turn on or off and just work with our default settings.

My interest is the reality that 25% of our new business tends to come from the web and therefore non readers. These guys are finding the website through search engines. The robots look at everything. The revised email format has many more links so that it addresses the need of the robots as we know only a few humans will take time to click on every link!

What about video? It gives so much information in 3 minutes... how do we track this guys? Best we've got at the moment is 3,000 views last month using 8.5Gb of the video on the front of our website... that's off the back of 41,000 web visitors.

In my experience your summary was spot on... keep up the great work.

 P.S. I typed this into the system direct to avoid the Word issues... so if I've missed some spellings on the re-read let me apologise now to those that find that just sooooo irritating!

Wow, Paul, I never considered it in reference to the specific avenue that you are marketing in.  Kudos on your assessment of "mixing up the message", although it is nearly impossible not to mix up a message in insurance sales!!

Evan

www.Leads4Insurance.com

On 13:46:51 28 August 2006 PaulCrabtreeAdestra wrote:

Although more relevant for marketing emails, one thing to think about in this debate is the benefit of 'mixing up the message'.  

For a regular newsletters, using a similar lay-out is key to the reader experience- it allows readers to know where to find certain content, allows highlighting of key articles, to easily carry advertising and to convey brands.  This is something that is possible with both HTML and text formats (although I’d argue is harder to achieve with text).

By “mixing up the message”, I’m referring to the direct marketing benefits of repeating the same message using different formats.  Off line, you can use direct mail, inserts in relevant publications, piggy back inserts etc.  With email you can achieve the same effect by switching between html and text.

Think about it- for transactional, one-on-one customer service messages, what format would you expect the email to be in?  I’d predict your answer would be text…  So, can you use this expectation in your marketing communications?  Perhaps when asking for feedback (as Mike describes as ‘asking’) through surveys that can trigger ongoing, relevant direct communications. 

For promotional ‘brochure-ware’ communications conveying complicated messages, you’d suggest HTML.

Mixing up messages gives you flexibility and allows you to keep your message ‘fresh’, a tactic being used to reap dividends by a great number of Adestra clients.

Paul

Paul Crabtree
Marketing Director

Adestra Ltd
www.adestra.co.uk
Fast, responsive and knowledgeable

 .... Adestra is an email marketing agency with one aim - to be the email marketers' first choice partner.

Thanks for the heads up Jonathan, most of the time those are active links, don't know what happened with that one.  I'm sorry that my response used the word insurance and it seemed to offend you, I'll try to post something of particular interest to you in the future.  Did you have something to add to the thread that was particularly helpful or interesting?  I hope this doesn't come across as being defensive, I do appreciate your input.  Have a great day.

Evan

www.Leads4Insurance.com

On 09:38:11 2 September 2006 JonathanDavey wrote:

Do yourself a favour Evan... if your going to just respond to people to promote insurance in a spammy or corporate bloggy get our name all over the place type way... then please use active links to make your mission more effective... by so doing you'll be increasing the links back to the site that pays your salary and increase your net worth to your next employer!

www.Leads4Insurance.com

E-consultancy are cool with this but the readers of your blogs may find them irritating... might I suggest you consider contributing to the discussion with at least a paragraph that is relevant before launching into the marketing pitch.

Thankyou

Jon Davey - Director of LiaiseOnline Limited, producers of BusinessinBerkshire, 40,000 visitors a month can't be wrong!

On 05:35:08 1 September 2006 JustinWaganer wrote:

Wow, Paul, I never considered it in reference to the specific avenue that you are marketing in.  Kudos on your assessment of "mixing up the message", although it is nearly impossible not to mix up a message in insurance sales!!

Evan

www.Leads4Insurance.com

On 13:46:51 28 August 2006 PaulCrabtreeAdestra wrote:

Although more relevant for marketing emails, one thing to think about in this debate is the benefit of 'mixing up the message'.  

For a regular newsletters, using a similar lay-out is key to the reader experience- it allows readers to know where to find certain content, allows highlighting of key articles, to easily carry advertising and to convey brands.  This is something that is possible with both HTML and text formats (although I’d argue is harder to achieve with text).

By “mixing up the message”, I’m referring to the direct marketing benefits of repeating the same message using different formats.  Off line, you can use direct mail, inserts in relevant publications, piggy back inserts etc.  With email you can achieve the same effect by switching between html and text.

Think about it- for transactional, one-on-one customer service messages, what format would you expect the email to be in?  I’d predict your answer would be text…  So, can you use this expectation in your marketing communications?  Perhaps when asking for feedback (as Mike describes as ‘asking’) through surveys that can trigger ongoing, relevant direct communications. 

For promotional ‘brochure-ware’ communications conveying complicated messages, you’d suggest HTML.

Mixing up messages gives you flexibility and allows you to keep your message ‘fresh’, a tactic being used to reap dividends by a great number of Adestra clients.

Paul

Paul Crabtree
Marketing Director

Adestra Ltd
www.adestra.co.uk
Fast, responsive and knowledgeable

 .... Adestra is an email marketing agency with one aim - to be the email marketers' first choice partner.

Thanks Jonathan, I don't know how I missed that!  Very good information, good read.

Evan

On 17:37:00 26 August 2006 JonathanDavey wrote:

Since I began sending out emails some 6 years ago, making me an old timer in this space, I have found that html emails produce the best response.

I agree with you Mike you've got to offer a variety of formats for viewers to select. I assume Ashley's point is based on the reality that most email campaigns will be a single message, rather than aggregated.

Recently we have been trying some new formats of our twice weekly BusinessinBerkshire newsletter. We have asked the audience to tell us what they think. We have not quite begged, but strongly indicated a deep desire to know what they think... as anyone with experience at trying to get feedback will know it is slow coming!

Anyway, our previous format for the last 2 years (we've been sending the newsletter for 4.5 years now)  was 650 pixels wide, first column 400, second around 200. Each article had an approx 200 pixel image, a few words underneath and click for more on both the image and below the abstract. The newsletter was up to 30 stories high, so contained 60ish links.

See the 2nd August copy here...

New Format 23rd August

As a new format we are trying 3 columns to reduce the height. The feedback is proving positive but the activity levels are down. The 2nd Aug email above had 45 links achieve 575 click throughs, the revised version for 23rd has seen 80 links achieve 413 clicks.

Now both are in real time, so the first has had the chance to be viewed more often, it is holiday time and so fewer people around.

My gut tells me that it's the white space thing. Our email is aimed at business people and they like space to consider, they are regular readers and so take the time to scroll down the whole email (sometimes we stick a nugget at the bottom and it will get the 2nd most number of clicks!)

We have been evolving a Kids in Berkshire email and it seems that kids like intense. Lots of little boxes with copy I can't read is where they are at!

It could be an age thing but probably more of a pace of life thing...

The previous format is easier to manage... so we'll try the revised format for a few weeks and perhaps try some other formats to see what response they get. But we will not mess around forever, it's fun for a short time but could become annoying for everyone!!

As regard the plain text version. Our system will sniff out what our readers systems can handle and drop off the format that suits them. If we want to track the plain text then our Emaillabs system will add a string of code that we can track. We prefer to give the reader a no tracking link so it looks normal and doesn't scare them off. We know that much fewer use the plain text version and they tend to be techies as most of us don't know what to turn on or off and just work with our default settings.

My interest is the reality that 25% of our new business tends to come from the web and therefore non readers. These guys are finding the website through search engines. The robots look at everything. The revised email format has many more links so that it addresses the need of the robots as we know only a few humans will take time to click on every link!

What about video? It gives so much information in 3 minutes... how do we track this guys? Best we've got at the moment is 3,000 views last month using 8.5Gb of the video on the front of our website... that's off the back of 41,000 web visitors.

In my experience your summary was spot on... keep up the great work.

 P.S. I typed this into the system direct to avoid the Word issues... so if I've missed some spellings on the re-read let me apologise now to those that find that just sooooo irritating!