Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Designing a modern email

blog.postmarkapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 70 posts

Re: Designing a modern email

#41

Post by eli »

m_d wrote: post #12
na85 wrote: post #2

Perhaps a more fitting title would be "designing a modern spam message"? Those emails are exactly the kind of emails that I never read.

While you may never read them, a surprising number of people do. I had an internship where my primary responsibility was composing HTML emails that went out to users on a weekly basis. If I remember correctly, the majority of our users opened the emails, and roughly 5-10% clicked on a link to content on the site. I imagine these number vary quite a bit, but for a site with a paid membership we saw a lot of traffic fr…

Indeed, many people enjoy reading content in their email client and prefer it over other delivery mechanisms. (Some people live in their email client.)

Re: Designing a modern email

#42

Post by acuozzo »

dsabanin wrote: post #38
acuozzo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I read the entire post from beginning to end. I still wholeheartedly believe that nobody wants e-mails like this. Yes, I'm speaking in absolutes and yes, I don't give a damn. > If you don't want them, it doesn't mean nobody does. Correct. I chose to speak in absolutes to make a point. > There's also an unsubscribe link at the bottom. That's wonderful, but I'm pretty sure the terminal emulator I'm running Alpine…

http://www.madboa.com/geek/pine-macosx/#mimeapps-web

Nice, thanks!

Re: Designing a modern email

#43

Post by jhammer »

Jgrubb wrote: post #31
jhammer wrote: post #15

I'm one of the developers for the Direct Mail app mentioned in the article. Would be happy to answer any questions. Thanks for the interesting post!

I'd never heard of it, but just gave it a spin and it's really impressive. I work for a decent sized publishing co that sends a lot of email newsletters as part of it's core biz. I know this e3 thing is part of your service, but is there any planned integration with something like Exact Target (via API, not just SMTP)? Thanks!

Thanks! We have additional integrations planned, but if you have something in particular in mind, please drop me (Jonathan) a note: http://directmailmac.com/support. Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Designing a modern email

#45

Post by Demiurge »

286c8cb04bda wrote: post #34
Demiurge wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTML as a technology to render plain text obviously isn't getting in the way, because it's plain text. All the features of HTML beyond that get in the way by obscuring the plain text and the information plain text conveys. In my mind, email, or text communication, is not about presentation but is about textual content. If you want to deliver media or style or a visual presentation, it's just not email. I would strong…

> All the features of HTML beyond that get in the way by obscuring the plain text and the information plain text conveys. I don't see any obfuscation happening in the emails shown in this article. Rather, the article's suggestions give even more emphasis to the text. "Grr HTML bad" is not a very defensible position. > In my mind, email, or text communication, is not about presentation but is about textual content. It…

I agree that typography, a tiny subset of HTML, is important, and that the emails in article look good and are very readable. However, like with most things, such as scripting and root access, there are security and eyecare concerns involved. And so, I think it is still best that only I am allowed to pick the font and spacing that are comfortable for me, and the sender can only send me plain text information.

Re: Designing a modern email

#47

Post by benihana »

acuozzo wrote: post #3

Nobody wants to receive e-mails like this.

Since you enjoy speaking in absolutes, I'll speak your language. You're wrong.

Millions of people not only ask for emails like this, they enjoy them and engage them, and companies all over the world have conversion data showing that people want to get emails like this and use them to purchase things.

Nice try though.

Re: Designing a modern email

#48

Post by Aardwolf »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #28

> 79% of your readers spent longer than 2+ seconds looking at your email I understand how opened emails can be tracked without javascript, via server hits to img files, but what magic allows you to track how long it was opened?

Indeed, the 2 seconds it takes to find the "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom.

Re: Designing a modern email

#49

Post by acuozzo »

nivla wrote: post #30
acuozzo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I read the entire post from beginning to end. I still wholeheartedly believe that nobody wants e-mails like this. Yes, I'm speaking in absolutes and yes, I don't give a damn. > If you don't want them, it doesn't mean nobody does. Correct. I chose to speak in absolutes to make a point. > There's also an unsubscribe link at the bottom. That's wonderful, but I'm pretty sure the terminal emulator I'm running Alpine…

Curious, without HTML do you expect everyone to copy-paste confirmation and password reset links? How do you account for broken links due to message truncate or unicode rendering? What about aligning various sections of the message? Controlling the font size of header, body and footer? HTML has as much history in emails as it does in the web. Taking HTML out of email is as hard as trying to take the Smart Phone out o…

> Curious, without HTML do you expect everyone to copy-paste confirmation and password reset links?

Yes, I do.

> How do you account for broken links due to message truncate or unicode rendering?

I've never encountered a broken hyperlink due to message truncation or Unicode rendering. My terminal emulator is set to use the UTF-8 character-set. Please provide an example or demonstration of this.

> What about aligning various sections of the message?

Text comes left-aligned in most of the world and right-aligned elsewhere. What kind of alignment are you referring to here?

> Controlling the font size of header, body and footer?

What's the value in altering the appearance of the text you want to send to someone?

> HTML has as much history in emails as it does in the web.

Incorrect.

> Taking HTML out of email is as hard as trying to take the Smart Phone out of phones today.

I don't have a "smart" phone. What can I gain by owning one?

Re: Designing a modern email

#50

Post by ownagefool »

dsabanin wrote: post #4
acuozzo wrote: post #3

Nobody wants to receive e-mails like this.

Well if people read them and click on the links from these emails, then you must be wrong. Surprise! Did you even read the post? If you don't want them, it doesn't mean nobody does. There's also an unsubscribe link at the bottom.

I worked for probably the largest hosting providor in the UK and directly worked on their email system which largely consisted of genric marketing emails.

They had a lot of data from these emails and it's hard to argue with the sheer size of the company, but data I'm pretty sure they didn't have is whether or not this type of behaviour turned off more customers than it turned on.

Like I said, it's hard to argue with the sheer size of the company but they were living off of momentum gained from companies which were bought, with churn rates forever growing in just about every brand.

While I'm not going to suggest this is all down to sending a few dodgy emails, it did feel like it had a lot to do with putting the marketing department before technical competency.

Post reply on HN