Hi Everyone,

I'm an email marketing newbie but I've been doing some research on the topic and think I understand whats required.

So a quick checklist

- Provide a relevant straightforward subject line
- Assume a width of 600px (max) for mail reader view ports
- Use alt tags and minimal usage of images
- Rely on backdated HTML for formatting and use CSS1 standards
- Use inline styles
- Provide a way to unsubscribe in the footer
- Use as much plain text as possible
- Provide a catchy headline to the newsletter
- Provide a call to action!
- Provide well formed HTML and check for validation errors
- Avoid overloading with keywords that could trigger spam filters

Ok so that's my checklist so far. I'm a bit anxious about using table layouts and little CSS. I've spent so much time reading books and looking at websites on best practice CSS XTHML it seems some what counterproductive to go back to old HTML.

Does anyone know of a good source or tutorial on creating a simple HTML newsletter and how it should be structured from a coding point of view?

Oh and have I missed out on anything else? Some links to great resources would be really appreciated .

1. Use tables ... (makes me cringe too)
2. very basic css for colouring only
3. do some testing on as many mail readers as possible
[I'll guess outlook / outlook express / thunderbird / evolution would be the main client apps]
gmail / hotmail or whatever its called these days / yahoo mail

4. Make sure the people have actually signed up to receive your newsletter
5. Make sure if they click the unsubscribe link it works (obvious but do testing to make sure)

6. If you want things to look kinda complex ... use graphics
7. Provide a link to an online version of it ...

... and so on ...

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I was just about to point the #7th as well.

In theory you seem to know what to do, put it in practise and should work fine.

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Thanks for the advice and prompt responses.

I found HTML Email Marketing from MailChimp to be really useful.

I saved some time modifying some existing templates which were provided for free here:
Free HTML Email Newsletter Templates from MailChimp

They also have a free guide to help you understand important issues with HTML email marketing.

Don't include Flash, javascript or forms in the emails

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Just to follow up on this thread.

We sent the email out and the only tracking I could implement was how many clicks we received for each link in the email. I could not track email openings with the tracking software we are using.

We have something of 400 + members on the site and we received about 100 clicks in total, granted some users could click more than 1 link. If I assume at least 2 clicks per person that means at least 50 opened the email.

I think that's a good response and I checked the email in Outlook, Gmail and Hotmail. It seemed to look really good and consistent. In Gmail the site logo was missing but I styled the alt text of the image and it seems to have worked well.

Thats something I would never have considered, what does the CSS for that look like?

img.class:alt{} no?

Is it widely supported? ie6, ff, outlook?

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If the email standards project takes off things will be a LOT easier

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I have used Sendstudio for newsletters in the past.

It can tell you the following and more:

how many people opened the email
how many emails bounced
how many people clicked on whatever link is contained on your newsletter to reach your website
how many people unsubscribed from the newsletter

Pretty cool software

How does it track open rates?

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