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Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

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Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#101

Post by twobyfour »

ubermonkey wrote: post #97
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>Very few people, in my experience, apply any formatting to their personal emails whatsoever Outside of technical circles, this isn't really true IME. I mean, I fought the plaintext good fight for years, but now in the year of our lord 2017, I frequently send emails that include boldfaced headings, indented paragraphs, true bulleted lists, etc., because it improves readability vs. "ocean of plain text" for most peopl…

Structural markup is different from email designs with background colors, borders, hero images, and the like. It still essentially reads as text, even if it's not technically plain text.

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#102

Post by twobyfour »

_jal wrote: post #65
Klathmon wrote: post #3

Can'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…

So nobody who wants to talk to you uses Gmail?

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#103

Post by coldtea »

da_chicken wrote: post #86
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

A lot?

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#104

Post by ldiracdelta »

MiguelHudnandez wrote: post #36
IgorPartola wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah. Save 15% or more with GEICO. And all other insurance companies have similar slogans. Why can’t you just keep switching between them until you pay nothing?! :)

Their phrase is “...could save you 15% or more,” which, incidentally, includes any potential savings between zero and one hundred percent. Their catch phrase contains literally no information except a suggestion of 15%.

15% savings could also be the threshold of complacency vs pain for most people. Most insurance companies probably show a 15% savings for people to go through the hassle of switching.

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#105

Post by sebringj »

This is pretty much what I've experienced by accident. There were times in my app that I screwed up and had to send out some emails explaining or to users in some particular situation where it was necessary to communicate something all responding way more than from the MailChimp and had to scramble to get it out, not caring about looks and was high response rate. Another occasion where I was lazy to pretty up the announcement email also had a much better click rate than MailChimp. I was suspecting something was off but seems this article is making me think it wasn't a coincidence.

By the way, you can still send HTML and just wrap a DIV around your pure text with a style="white-space:pre-wrap" along with any font you want which is bad ass as it preserves your return breaks and stuff and you can put tags or whatever in there and spend way less time.

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#106

Post by da_chicken »

Retric wrote: post #95
da_chicken wrote: post #88

Earlier 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. 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. I…

> (not the ones I use for important things like banks) Why is why this works, if you have a seperate email account for people, you can then check the email account for companies once a day without missing anything. IMO, it's a great compromise allowing for connectivity without dealing with junk.

I disagree. Instead of partitioning with rules and filters, you're partitioning with accounts. It's less granular. It's not like the two accounts method is going to eliminate problems of false positives and false negatives. It just means you have two accounts to manage.

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#107

Post by KGIII »

gutnor wrote: post #82
_jal wrote: post #65

Earlier 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…

In Thunderbird, you have to change it to plain text. I default to sending plain text, as a general rule. I usually read in plain text but currently have one system set to view in simple HTML. I forget why I changed that.

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#108

Post by KGIII »

freeflight wrote: post #37
rqs wrote: post #31

> The plain email—which took no time to design or code—was opened by more recipients and had 3.3x more clicks than the designed email. I think this result needs more investigation. We need to know why people open plain email more than those fancy designed ones, rather than just having those numbers. Designed email, for a lot of companies, is a matter of style, a VI (Visual Identity) for the receiver to remember. It's…

> I think this result needs more investigation. We need to know why people open plain email more than those fancy designed ones, rather than just having those numbers. I've seen plenty of people who make quite an effort not to receive/open anything that ain't plain text for simple security concerns. Similarly, many design emails end up being displayed butchered for users due to adblockers/email provider/client blocki…

How do they know they are HTML before they open them?

Also, I read in plain text. If you want me to read it in HTML format, include a link to the web version and, if I'm interested, I will actually click on that - which has the added benefit of putting me on your site.

Not many do that. 'If you want to read this in HTML format, click this link.' That works and I may very well click it.

Edit:

Never mind. I see they speak of unstyled HTML email, not plain text email. So, the email is still HTML, it's just not pretty. Chances are, I won't notice as I read in plain text most of the time.

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#109

Post by conductr »

gutnor wrote: post #82
_jal wrote: post #65

Earlier 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…

I assume HTML is fine so long as you limit the styling so it appears like a person wrote it

Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

#110

Post by ams6110 »

pc86 wrote: post #16
Klathmon wrote: post #3

Can'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…

I love the promotional filter. I can look through the 50-60 promos and newsletters I get every day at one shot, open the 0-5 that look interesting then wipe everything. Then something happened where Bryan Harris' VideoFruit emails started coming directly into my inbox rather than the promo folder where they had been. Guess which is the only email list I've unsubscribed from in the last month?

I like the promotional filter too. I never open it.
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