Generally I buy the argument, but I don't think the fact that it's easier to act when viewing from mobile was given enough weight. I think that probably made a huge difference. I'd love to see those stats.
Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
61–70 of 122 posts
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#62> The plain email—which took no time to design or code—was opened by more recipients...
That's interesting. I wonder how this would have any effect on opening an email. In my mail clients on mobile and desktop, I cannot tell if an email is styled or not just by looking at the list of messages in my inbox. I have to actually open it to see if it's styled.
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#63Can'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 more like product placement in that they blend in with the 'real' content.
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#64> 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…
> We need to know why people open plain email more than those fancy designed ones, rather than just having those numbers This is interesting. Would you have questioned the numbers if they showed the inverse (ie designed emails have higher click rates)? > a well-designed email could increase the efficiency of email reading as you may already familiar with some email and their layouts I don't think this is true at all.…
> This is interesting. Would you have questioned the numbers if they showed the inverse (ie designed emails have higher click rates)?
I think there are already answers to that, as we actually gradually came from that age where email were just plain text, to today's we have option to send HTML in emails.
> I don't think this is true at all. IMO test emails are /much/ more easy to read, because I can use a consistent font and layout for /all/ my emails instead of reading through every designers view.
Well, I think somebody should do a survey for that, about consistent font and layout, easy reading and also fatigue (It apply to driving[0], maybe it also apply to text reading).
And, I don't think plain-text email will be easy to read by natural. Yes, they can be made easy to read, but it doesn't mean they ARE easy to read.
A designed email can be made hard to read, and we call that poorly designed. On the other hand, they can be well-designed and easier to read than plain-text emails.
Boil down, the design of email (whether plain-text or HTML) must serve a purpose. The designer must know what they're doing and hold that purpose in their mind. Plain-text or HTML is a choice they need to made to better fulfill that purpose.
Simply saying one of them is better than the other is inaccurate.
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#65Can'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 to procmail). It might have hit others, but it is a far better false-positive rate than any other individual test.
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#66Click 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?"
Users can't really tell that an email is styled or plain before opening it, so if the opened numbers were too different, I'd be concerned that something was up.
Not necessarily the full story. I have set my preference to text email over html email in one client that I use. This is at least one example of a client making the decision before opening the email.
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#67Click 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.
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Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#68Click 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?"
I'd call 1% quite high.
This represents everything I hate about email marketing. You’d honestly consider wasting 99 people's time, and possibly engaging 1 person, as a 'good' result? The bar for email marketing is set so low, it might as well not exist. Email was a free, effective communication mechanism that we’ve all but ruined. At least a return to plain text might rescue it to some extent, but I fear it’s already too late.
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#69My first reaction was curiosity of how they would know the performance of plaintext email, so to spoil the surprise these are HTML emails with a plain design. HTML is still required to track how many people open the email, though obviously not how many click through.
Re: Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd call 1% quite high.
This represents everything I hate about email marketing. You’d honestly consider wasting 99 people's time, and possibly engaging 1 person, as a 'good' result? The bar for email marketing is set so low, it might as well not exist. Email was a free, effective communication mechanism that we’ve all but ruined. At least a return to plain text might rescue it to some extent, but I fear it’s already too late.
Seen in the context as just another form of advertising, 1% is well within the range of acceptable engagement.
I agree with you, but suggest that the frustration is with the broader issue of "noise" pollution created by advertising incentives.