Think About It

The allure and popularity of e-mail marketing come as no surprise. E-mail messages are delivered instantly, directly to the targeted individuals, and with zero costs for printing or postage. It’s these unique qualities of e-mail that make it such an attractive way to communicate.

Yet when some companies embark on an e-mail campaign, they seem to forget that e-mail is unique. They want to design their e-mail messages like any other web page.

A prime example is the compulsion to make e-mail messages overly pretty, with lots of rich colors and detailed graphics. What’s wrong with wanting an e-mail to look good? We’re glad you asked.

1. Using graphics hurts your e-mail message’s chances of getting delivered. Spammers often embed their messages in graphic images that can’t be screened by spam filters. So the webmasters at some domains kill any and all e-mails with embedded graphics. Your beautiful e-mail might get pulled over by the spam cops before it ever gets to your customer’s inbox.
   
   
2. Many people will never see your art. A significant percentage e-mail users have HTML either turned off in their e-mail reading software or blocked by spam protection. Yes, they may be able to view your pictures with a simple mouse click. But they usually don’t. So you’re not earning a good return on the money you spent to get your e-mail to look like a work of art.
   
   
3. Not all e-mail readers are created equal. To begin with, there is simply no standard for programming in HTML and CSS across the myriad of e-mail reading programs in use today. Support even varies from one version of an e-mail client to the next revision. So, even if recipients view your HTML design, they may not see things exactly the way you wanted them to look. There are just too many people using too many e-mail programs to be able to create an elaborate design that works universally.
   
   “Well,” people say, “we’ll design it to look good in the most recent version of Outlook for Windows. That’s most of our market.” Not so fast. True, Outlook is by far the most popular e-mail reader in corporate America. But Microsoft just announced that Outlook 2007 will be able to display only the simplest HTML design elements. So when it comes to viewing complex designs, you can count Outlook users out.
   
   
4. E-mail is fleeting; your most important communication shouldn’t be. Without question, there is a place for eye-catching design. But e-mail isn’t it. An e-mail is the electronic equivalent of a Post-it note. People open it, scan it and delete it. So e-mail is best used for quick, regular communication. If you need serious brand-building that requires real eye appeal, choose another vehicle.

It all goes back to what we’ve been saying for years: Good design isn’t pretty.

When we put up a big “Good design isn’t pretty” banner in our studio lobby, people may have thought we were putting our own tongue-in-cheek spin on the old adage about the sausage factory – you may like what we make here, but you don’t want to watch it being made.

What we actually mean is that being pretty isn’t the critical measure of good design. What makes a design good is that it works.

In the world of e-mail, what works is simplicity, not showiness.