How big was the mailing list? In other words: What is the sample size for this experiment?
> As one example, I tested two versions of a newsletter that went out to 24,000+ recipients:
Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
81–90 of 122 posts
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#82Can't most of the results be attributed to it simply being different ? If everyone started sending marketing emails like this, then they would start looking like advertisements, they would feel less personal, spam and "promotional" filters would adapt, and you'd be back to square 1. Plus, I very much like the "Promotional" filters for email, both as someone that receives it, and someone that has sent it. Email spam i…
One way it works better is that there are people, like me, who have noticed that humans who want to talk to me (as opposed to wanting to sell me something) don't send HTML email. So on my private personal account (not the ones I use for important things like banks), all HTML email is filtered directly to /dev/null. That's caught exactly one personal email I'm aware of in ~15 years (I forget exactly when I added that…
Do the email client still default to TXT nowadays ?
Regardless how basic the email, it seems Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail always send them in HTML and I need to do something special to send it in plain text.
At work, the mail very often have some sort of minor formatting. A bold sentence here, a reply in a different colour there, or even simply links. Except for automated alert message from a system or another, the emails are basically always HTML.
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#83Click rate of plain text email: 1% Click rate of html email: 0.3% That's very low and yet the result was, loudly claimed in bold, that the plain text one had 3.3x more clicks than the designed email!! Also, the opened rate is within the margin of error and therefore insignificant. I may not be a data analyst, yet I look at the analysis and think to myself, "eh?"
Each email went out to 12,000 people. 125 opened the unstyled mail, 37 opened the styled mail. That result seems pretty significant to me.
Yeah, that's statistically significant according to kissmetrics: https://www.kissmetrics.com/growth-tools/ab-significance-tes...
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
One way it works better is that there are people, like me, who have noticed that humans who want to talk to me (as opposed to wanting to sell me something) don't send HTML email. So on my private personal account (not the ones I use for important things like banks), all HTML email is filtered directly to /dev/null. That's caught exactly one personal email I'm aware of in ~15 years (I forget exactly when I added that…
Do the email client still default to TXT nowadays ? Regardless how basic the email, it seems Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail always send them in HTML and I need to do something special to send it in plain text. At work, the mail very often have some sort of minor formatting. A bold sentence here, a reply in a different colour there, or even simply links. Except for automated alert message from a system or another, the emails…
Most of my friends and family to use Gmail; one uses Hotmail, and I have no trouble getting mail from any of them. I have no idea what Outlook does.
A lot of my work email indeed is HTML - people do love their red text and jokey memes. I'm talking about my personal mailbox that I use almost exclusively for talking to friends and family.
"Works on my machine."
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#85Can't most of the results be attributed to it simply being different ? If everyone started sending marketing emails like this, then they would start looking like advertisements, they would feel less personal, spam and "promotional" filters would adapt, and you'd be back to square 1. Plus, I very much like the "Promotional" filters for email, both as someone that receives it, and someone that has sent it. Email spam i…
One way it works better is that there are people, like me, who have noticed that humans who want to talk to me (as opposed to wanting to sell me something) don't send HTML email. So on my private personal account (not the ones I use for important things like banks), all HTML email is filtered directly to /dev/null. That's caught exactly one personal email I'm aware of in ~15 years (I forget exactly when I added that…
wow u r so cool bro.
lol kys faggot.
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#86Can't most of the results be attributed to it simply being different ? If everyone started sending marketing emails like this, then they would start looking like advertisements, they would feel less personal, spam and "promotional" filters would adapt, and you'd be back to square 1. Plus, I very much like the "Promotional" filters for email, both as someone that receives it, and someone that has sent it. Email spam i…
> If everyone started sending marketing emails like this, then they would start looking like advertisements I’m not sure they would. They’d look more like 'normal' emails. Very few people, in my experience, apply any formatting to their personal emails whatsoever, let alone go to great efforts designing a layout, colour scheme, etc. Currently, 'html email' is almost a euphemism for 'advert'; plain text emails are mor…
Remember when websites started to make advertisements that look like articles? How long did it take you to learn what was an ad and what is a legitimate article?
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#87A lot of this applies to web-design for (what should be) static sites as well. The more complex and "engaging" you make your site, the less likely people are able to read it cleanly. I wonder if anyone is doing a/b testing with those as well? KISS
At this point that is a feature, not a bug. That's the only explanation as almost all websites for products/services you don't already know of are utterly useless at explaining what precisely it is they do. I still get pretty upset by this and try to avoid buying from such companies whenever possible in my professional role, but I'm pretty convinced it's on purpose so you have to call someone and let them "engage" yo…
Maybe. But in many cases it's not a deliberate choice about motivating user behavior, it's about satisfying some highly-paid person's idea of how their business is special so the design must also be special.
OR they really have it together, and the design works great for their specific target buyer while turning off irrelevant folks like you.
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#88Can't most of the results be attributed to it simply being different ? If everyone started sending marketing emails like this, then they would start looking like advertisements, they would feel less personal, spam and "promotional" filters would adapt, and you'd be back to square 1. Plus, I very much like the "Promotional" filters for email, both as someone that receives it, and someone that has sent it. Email spam i…
One way it works better is that there are people, like me, who have noticed that humans who want to talk to me (as opposed to wanting to sell me something) don't send HTML email. So on my private personal account (not the ones I use for important things like banks), all HTML email is filtered directly to /dev/null. That's caught exactly one personal email I'm aware of in ~15 years (I forget exactly when I added that…
> One way it works better is that there are people, like me, who have noticed that humans who want to talk to me (as opposed to wanting to sell me something) don't send HTML email.
Except for legitimate automated emails. You know, like email confirmations when creating or updating an account, order confirmations, delivery notices, new login security notices, billing notifications, etc. are often sent in HTML email. If you literally pipe any HTML email to /dev/null, you will not be able to successfully register for any site that requires an email address, which is just about everything in today's world.
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#89How is it even possible to track the open rate without HTML? I'm not an email expert and genuinely curious. I was under the impression that people use tags for that.
When he says "plain text email", what he means is "HTML email with very little styling". Sending true plain text email without a multipart HTML section is much worse for deliverability, from my experience (assumedly because plaintext emails are almost always "automatic emails")
Why is sending true plain text email worse for deliverability?
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#90I see in your case text was better performing than html, but I would not bet it's the same for everyone. It's just actually depends, and anyone with a simple A/B test will determine if text is better than email. However the 5 reasons supporting text email are pretty wrong: 1) Poor rendering. Just use a good email editor, such beefree.io or others. Not a issue at all. 2) Mobile clients. Same as above 3) Email CSS. Sam…
> Poor rendering. Just use a good email editor, such beefree.io or others. Not a issue at all.
You want me to use an "email editor" that I had never even heard of before, and yet you claim that the reasons supporting text email are pretty wrong?