This Ace Hardware email has some great offers...

Right now thousands of people are re-installing Microsoft Outlook as they upgrade from XP to Windows 7. And the majority of these folks won’t touch the default settings which don’t load graphics within emails unless the user specifically asks to do so.

... but most recipients will see it in their preview pane like this.

Right now hundreds of marketers are designing emails that ignore this reality, by placing a big beautiful graphic at the top of the message that shows up as a blank spot superimposed with a red X instead of the desired image. Which means that most recipients will never see the graphic, or the message, because there is nothing visually compelling to pull them in. The “before and after” examples from Ace Hardware are proof positive. Inviting graphic and great offers, but most of the people who got this email will never see them. (I’m on a Mac so the red X’s show up as question marks for me, but the problem is the same.)

Better: REI newsletter has HTML text to tell the story before the graphics load.

So what can you do to fix it? Use HTML text creatively at the top of your email instead of relying on graphics to tell the story. The REI newsletter example is isn’t pretty, but there is a lot of REI identity here to pull people in, including the bar of clickable links.

Best: very little of this message is lost, even without graphic.

Better yet is the email from Beasley Direct that has a good ol’ compelling headline to pull people in, and places this to the left of the page so it will have maximum visibility on small screens. This email also includes ALT text—the words “Beasley Direct Marketing” over the graphic—which appear when the graphic doesn’t load. That’s another good practice. Better yet would have been a benefit message or call to action in the ALT tag, such as “request your complimentary landing pages guide”.

Make sure you’re following these simple steps next time an email goes out. Don’t get intimidated by your art director… the design can still look great, you just need a backup scenario when the graphics don’t load. And everybody will be happier with the higher open rate and, hopefully, more clickthroughs.

A good friend and colleague died this past winter. I quickly learned about a tribute website, and posted a message which expressed my feelings in the passion of the moment. Having achieved some satisfactory personal closure I never got around to contacting his widow, who is also a good friend and colleague.

That faux pas clearly deserves a bitch-slap from Miss Manners and I needed to atone for it. Thus, when the widow wrote a broadcast email with the news that she was moving to a small town where she would be mainly taking care of her aging parents, I responded with some personal news about my family and expressed a wish to keep in touch. I never heard back.

Some possibilities are: a/the lady’s mad at me, as well she should be. But what if b/in her new life she rarely checks email; or, c/my message got caught in her spam filter. How can I know and what do I do about it, if anything? Such are the new challenges of communication in the electronic age, as we attempt to communicate through media that are still being defined.

In my copywriting classes, I always do an informal survey of email habits. Some findings:

1. Email has gotten much more formal over the past decade as it’s become a primary mode of correspondence. Misspellings, for example, are no longer OK. (Save them for IM.)

2. The majority of female senders say they start their message with a salutation (Dear so-and-so) even though it’s superfluous. Most male senders don’t use a salutation.

3. Most people “sign” their emails with their personal name, even though it’s unnecessary because you can be identified both by the “from” line and from the boilerplate signature if you use one. A best practice seems to be to sign off with your first name just above the standard signature, as a way to personalize the email.

4. There’s a trend toward composing email in HTML even though there’s no need for it because no graphics are involved. I like words to stand on their own, so this one really makes me grind my teeth.