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Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the 's and 's

dodov.dev

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Re: Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the <tr>'s and <td>'s

#61

Post by m463 »

bilalq wrote: post #45
m463 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This appears to be untrue. I looked at all the amazon emails in my inbox and they are all: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Did you actually scroll through all the way? Some emails send both plain text and HTML. I looked through mine and indeed saw text/html for most Amazon emails (including AWS). Some AWS emails like ACM cert renewals were text/plain. Though like someone else said here, you may have changed a setting in your account preferences. The default is still HTML. ------=_Part_4161549_398020174.1685704999675 Content-Type: text/ht…

I have zero html attachments.

(These emails are not marketing emails which I don't get, they all relate to orders and shipping)

Re: Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the <tr>'s and <td>'s

#62

Post by fanf2 »

captn3m0 wrote: post #47
globalreset wrote: post #11

Text. Just use damn text. Nobody wants to look at your logo. Why biz people have to ruin everything.

The clients also need to focus on this. Apple Mail on iOS uses plain text variant to show snippets, but if you try to expand the email, it only supports HTML, without a fallback to plain text. This is often the case on slow internet.

That isn’t true: Apple Mail is perfectly capable of showing plain-text-only messages.

Re: Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the <tr>'s and <td>'s

#63

Post by seba_dos1 »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #55
LastTrain wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that depends. Is it something I need to see? Did I proactively ask for it, or did I neglect to opt out? Etc, etc. If you are having to measure response rate, and it doesn't involve an emergency alert or some such, it is probably spam.

Transactional mail is not marketing mail. It's typically a notification in response to an action you initiated on some web application. https://postmarkapp.com/blog/what-is-transactional-email-and...

How much sense does it make to measure and discuss response rates for transactional mails though?

Re: Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the <tr>'s and <td>'s

#64

Post by shortformblog »

scrollaway wrote: post #21
hdodov wrote: post #2

When I first got introduced to email development, I remember I wanted to throw myself off a cliff. I couldn't believe how nonsensical everything was. I kept track of everything in a little text document, which I've now turned into a post. If you happen to be starting out with emails, I hope this can get you up to speed with exactly how everything is fucked. And if you're an Outlook survivor, I hope you'll find someth…

Since you mention MJML: I wrote a little tool called mjmgr which was meant to be a prototype of a MJML email manager for a bunch of providers. So that you can keep the source code of the MJML email checked in, but deploy it as compiled templates across various email template providers. https://github.com/siguelaola/mjmgr I only really did sendgrid and mailgun, but as a POC it worked well. Just putting this out there…

This is cool! My CMS (Craft CMS) has an MJML plugin as well as some good inlining plugins, making it possible to build emails using the CMS as the base. My goal was to have a system that put email templating on equal ground to content display, and MJML was a really key part of that. Love seeing the cool ideas MJML has inspired in the ecosystem.

Re: Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the <tr>'s and <td>'s

#65

Post by LastTrain »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #55
LastTrain wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that depends. Is it something I need to see? Did I proactively ask for it, or did I neglect to opt out? Etc, etc. If you are having to measure response rate, and it doesn't involve an emergency alert or some such, it is probably spam.

Transactional mail is not marketing mail. It's typically a notification in response to an action you initiated on some web application. https://postmarkapp.com/blog/what-is-transactional-email-and...

OK. So what, I'm not going to complete my password reset notification because the page isn't beautiful? If you are tracking response rates it is because people aren't expecting an email, because they didn't ask for one (i.e. it isn't a password reset notification). GP is right - I want information I /need/ to be in an email in a succinct format, and I don't want emails I don't need.

Re: Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the <tr>'s and <td>'s

#66

Post by dsr_ »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #56
dsr_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing in the average internal email that requires HTML, much less CSS. There is nothing in the average external email that requires HTML or CSS. There is no useful content in any email that requires JavaScript. "looks unprofessional" is cultural, and of the same significance as green vs blue text bubbles in your SMS messaging system.

This is an absurdly wrong, yet characteristically HN take. Transactional mail typically requires some hyperlink for the average user.

No, it doesn't. Email is a great feedback medium.

"If you want to continue with the subscription, reply with the word YES on a line by itself. You can put comments on other lines and we will read them."

do-not-reply@marketing.com is one of the stupid innovations by people who can't automate their email. Transactional email gets handled by robots and fed into a ticketing system when it goes awry.

Treat your customers like customers, not consumers.

Re: Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the <tr>'s and <td>'s

#67

Post by blowski »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #63
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transactional mail is not marketing mail. It's typically a notification in response to an action you initiated on some web application. https://postmarkapp.com/blog/what-is-transactional-email-and...

How much sense does it make to measure and discuss response rates for transactional mails though?

Low response rates are used as a spam signal by major email providers, whatever the type of email.

Re: Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the <tr>'s and <td>'s

#68

Post by JimDabell »

m463 wrote: post #61
bilalq wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually scroll through all the way? Some emails send both plain text and HTML. I looked through mine and indeed saw text/html for most Amazon emails (including AWS). Some AWS emails like ACM cert renewals were text/plain. Though like someone else said here, you may have changed a setting in your account preferences. The default is still HTML. ------=_Part_4161549_398020174.1685704999675 Content-Type: text/ht…

I have zero html attachments. (These emails are not marketing emails which I don't get, they all relate to orders and shipping)

They aren’t talking about HTML attachments. HTML email is typically sent as a multipart/alternative email with one text/plain component and one text/html component. An email with attachments is a multipart/mixed email.

Re: Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the <tr>'s and <td>'s

#69

Post by JimDabell »

dsr_ wrote: post #66
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an absurdly wrong, yet characteristically HN take. Transactional mail typically requires some hyperlink for the average user.

No, it doesn't. Email is a great feedback medium. "If you want to continue with the subscription, reply with the word YES on a line by itself. You can put comments on other lines and we will read them." do-not-reply@marketing.com is one of the stupid innovations by people who can't automate their email. Transactional email gets handled by robots and fed into a ticketing system when it goes awry. Treat your customers…

Transactional emails are things like reset password emails. You’re really going to build your reset password functionality by having people email their new password to you?

Re: Why does email development have to suck? – Explaining all the <tr>'s and <td>'s

#70

Post by corporage »

dsr_ wrote: post #66
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an absurdly wrong, yet characteristically HN take. Transactional mail typically requires some hyperlink for the average user.

No, it doesn't. Email is a great feedback medium. "If you want to continue with the subscription, reply with the word YES on a line by itself. You can put comments on other lines and we will read them." do-not-reply@marketing.com is one of the stupid innovations by people who can't automate their email. Transactional email gets handled by robots and fed into a ticketing system when it goes awry. Treat your customers…

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