Is Outlook Mangling Your Emails?

Last week, we talked about some general email rendering issues. This week, we want to dig a little bit deeper. Specifically, let's tackle potential rendering problems using MS Outlook. Why highlight Outlook? Well, let's just say that the Outlook "issue cup" can certainly runneth over - or so we're hearing.

When the original gets mucked up
When your email looks less like Robert Redford's classic Great Gatsby and more like Leonardo DiCaprio's techno-Gatsby version, you know something's not working as it should. (Sorry, couldn't resist).

Here are 8 ways to troubleshoot and avoid some common issues:

1. Start with any tables you may have in your email. Does every table - and column - have a width?
Spot check your code. Make sure the column widths plus any cell spacing you have both add up to the width you gave your table.

2. Make sure that all of your images have a set width and height, as well.

3. Whenever possible, avoid CSS.

4. Replace floats, div's, background images, padding and margins with basic HTML.

5. Consider replacing the spaces between words with   if the words appear to be 'pushing' together.

6. Switch out new paragraphs with double line breaks: </br></br>.

7. If your whitespace isn't showing up well, try making a white image with a set width and height, and then putting it in your email.

8. Check all of your HTML and make sure you aren't missing any end tags and fix any HTML errors.

That's about it for now - and we hope this helps a bit. If you continue to have rendering issues with Outlook or experience problems not addressed here, feel free to give us a shout. We're here to help, and our team has seen just about everything.

Until next time, have a great rest of the week!

Maintaining Email Integrity With Mobile

Your email marketing campaign may look pretty spiffy on a PC, but check it out on a smartphone or tablet. It could very well look like the stuff of nightmares. Unless you adopt a truly "Mobile Mentality", you're not in shape to move ahead with the rest of the pack - let alone sprint ahead.

The EEC, or email marketing arm of the Direct Marketing Association, is a global professional organization that strives to enhance the image of email marketing and communications. Translation: It's a good idea to listen to what they have to say.

Here's your chance (and benefit)
EEC has some concise and helpful tips to help you keep your email marketing cohesive, attractive, and in terms of mobile connectivity, professional looking.

1. Concentrate on your content
With every email you create, mobile rendering should be a part of the process. This includes: subject lines, body content, graphics, testing, links, metrics (i.e. everything). Your "From" address, subject lines and headlines are perhaps the most important variables to consider. They're the first thing recipients see, so you'd better optimize the smaller space capacities to put your most effective, eye-catching and relevant foot forward first. Used to writing short subject lines? Cut it in half and get used to it. And while you're at it, eliminate more conceptual headlines that prompt viewers to ponder too long. You're dealing with an audience of shorter attention spans, and your competition in the mobile space is fierce.

Bottom line: Mobile simply doesn't offer the space to present a "says it all" graphic, so use your words wisely.

2. Respect fingers and hold the Flash
You'll have better results if you build landing pages optimized for mobile using HTML, CSS and smaller amounts of JAVA. Also remember how your recipients will be scanning through your emails. It's the power of the mighty finger - and unless they find your email communications easy to swipe, they could get fed up and flee before absorbing your message. Improve functionality after the fact, and they may still hesitate to click-through in the future for fear of the repeat experience. Buttons need to be a legible and usable size, as well.

3. Keep your forms brief
EEC recommends simply asking for an email address. While it's easier to submit information on an iPad or similar tablet, how far do you think recipients will go to fill in the tiny blanks on a smartphone?

One final bit of advice
This you already know: Test and then test again. And somewhere in the middle, revisit and tweak your content for the optimal experience. This little bit of sweat on the front end is well worth the desired result on the other side, not to mention the potential ROI you want to achieve in any email marketing campaign.

Get a jump start on testing by using JangoMail's Email Preview Rendering tool! As always, if you have any questions or comments on our blogs, give us a shout.

Until then, have a great week, everyone!

New Feature - Campaign Send Approval

Question: Are you the manager of the email marketing department at your company?

• Do you employ other talented individuals to write marketing emails for you?
• Do you want those authors to have access to create emails on JangoMail on their own terms?
• Do you want to be in control of the emails that actually get sent to your end customers?

Seems impossible to have all of these features at once? We think not. That's why we developed a feature for JangoMail that makes this level of engagement and control available to those "heads of marketing" out there.

Grant Your Approval to Send Campaigns...

Typically when you share a JangoMail account with different members in your organization, you create what are called Other Logins under your Account Settings. Other Logins are separate usernames and passwords that can have different restrictions to access different parts of the JangoMail service.

We added a new restriction option you can place on one of these Other Logins that allows you to restrict the ability for the account to send a message. Already an account could be blocked from accessing messages all together, if you select to restrict them from the "Messages" page. But now you have the fine grain control to allow a user to access the "Messages" page and create messages while you remain in control of actually initiating the sending of campaigns.

An account with this sending restriction applied can still create emails, preview, and save them.  When the author is content with an email design, instead of a "Send" button, they are presented with a button to "Submit for Approval".
 

Upon sending for approval, the account master (you) will receive an email with the summary of the email campaign. From here you are provided with a link to login to JangoMail and approve the campaign for sending. We added a convenient section to the top of the dashboard to display these campaigns awaiting approval.

 

In 2 clicks, you can review and then initiate sending of a mass email campaign to your audience. Need to make modifications? No problem. One click brings you to the editor where you can make changes before sending. If you need to disapprove or remove a campaign, simply delete it from the messages page.

That was easy.

And we like it that way. If you have any questions, comments, or other features you'd like us to build, please don't hesitate to ask.

Serving Up Outside Ads in Your Email Campaigns

Imagine, if you will, you're 'Joe's Pie Shop'.

It's almost swimsuit season, so business could be better. Time to amp up your marketing outreach and remind customers why your pies are worth the thighs. What do you do? You turn to a targeted email campaign.

You want to reach out to customers to elicit a reaction - a click to product, information, or a customized traffic lane on your website.

After devising an extremely clever and meaningful subject line that grabs their attention, recipients open, determined to dig deeper into what this communication's all about. Then, they're greeted by ...

SERVE IT UP RIGHT! Check out fancy, forever servewear on perfectpietools.com. 

Customer: "What? You have pie AND you're offering a value-add to enhance my pie eating experience? You're the best, Joe."

Well, at least that's the preferred reaction. But the flip side is that your customers' spammy senses could start tingling - damaging your reputation and the overall effectiveness of your email campaigns. Even if you're benefiting from a financial or product trade with this partner, that short-term benefit can get old, very fast, with potential, long-term customer relationships.

The good news is that if you present outside advertisements or endorsements in the right light, mutual success (for you, your partner and above-all your customer) is easy to achieve.

Here are some common sense tips:

1. Be relevant. You're a pie shop. So, skip the ads for gas stations. Unless, of course, you're empathizing with customers about tough economic times. Notifying them of a pie sale - and sharing an ad to the cheapest gas in town (to get to your place) is thoughful. Even better: Presenting an ad for $.50 off vanilla ice cream for Joe's Pie a la mode.

2. Be honest. Why the ad, Joe? If there's any confusion about why there are ads in your emails, address it with customers head-on. "We're including these ads to help keep our pie costs low" or "We provide ads for our community partners as a service to you". However you spin or explain it, your customers will appreciate your honesty. Here's an example from the web that still holds relevance for email: Pandora.com is a successful, live music streaming website - and they're not afraid to share with customers why they need to include ads.

3. Protect your reputation. Congrats - you're hitched to your advertiser in reputation. Now that your brand is tied to another's, beware. If that partner isn't as attentive to retaining ethical marketing as you are, what they do can hurt your business.

4. Exercise moderation. Don't overdo it. Consider there are times your customer simply wants some alone time. That means one-on-one communications between you and them. Email campaigns that includes outside ties or advertisements can be perceived as anything but personal, especially when it happens frequently. Customers may even feel 'sold out'.

5. Go full circle. Cross-branding like this is also an easy way to upsell back to your own products or services. If a tool makes it easy to serve up your pie, why not offer a discount on pie plates to complete the "set"? In this way, all products on the table present a relevant, cohesive offer that makes sense to a recipient. The information evolves from pure ad form to one of a trusted adviser who offers insight based on what you know your customers want or need. How well-thought out of you, Joe!

Have a question or comment about this blog? Looking for more insight to make your email marketing the best it can be? Contact us any time. We'd love to hear from you.

Until then, have a great rest of the week!

Your Emails Will Get to The INBOX (and other lies)

Any email marketing partner who promises 100% of your emails will hit the recipient's inbox aren't just misinformed - they're lying. The truth is, there's simply no guarantee of a foolproof method to dodge every spam filter or customized filter established by every potential recipient.

That said, there are some ways to improve the chances your emails hit those hard-sought targets.

8 ways JangoMail

gets your emails to the inbox

1. Separate yourself from the pack.
Use a branded "From" address rather than your complimentary username@jangomail.com "From" address. Ex.s: john.smith@company.com or john.smith@newsletters.company.com. Using your own domain, or creating a subdomain of your own carries your branding consistently throughout the message. Also, a key benefit is that each address can have its own SPF and DKIM records. These are "reverse lookups" that tell the receiving server that we have permission to send on behalf of your domain(s). There's also a SMTP level benefit, in that a branded sub-domain allows the SMTP MAIL FROM command during the SMTP transaction between our sender and the recipient server to show your sub-domain rathern than jangomail.com. Details

2. Keep track of yourself.
By default, every JangoMail account is assigned a system tracking domain that's shared among multiple clients (ex. x.jango5.com). By setting up a branded tracking domain based upon your organization's domain name, you can isolate yourself from the activities of other clients. To set this up, just go to Settings > Tracking > Tracking Domain. Details

3. "Up" your trustworthiness.
Setup DKIM for the domain use in your "From Address".
Yahoo! Mail and Gmail look for DKIM signatures in the headers of incoming email messages, considering them confirmation that the email was sent by who was purported to send it. In other words, consider it a sign of trust. Details

4. Clear the path for complaints.
After creating a DKIM record, click the link in the confirmation email from Yahoo to postmaster@yourdomain. Here's some background: When you create a DKIM record, Yahoo sends this confirmation email that includes the link to activate a "Feedback Loop". That loop is where Yahoo processes any complaints, and communicates those back to JangoMail. If you don't click the link to activate, complaints won't be properly reported and delivery to Yahoo will be negatively impacted - specifically folks looking for your unsubscribe list.

5. Stay master of your domain.
Setup SPF records on your domain, and then set your email campaigns to use your own "From Address" as the SMTP-level MAIL-FROM address. Details

6. Send backup - plain and simple.
If you're sending HTML email, always include a corresponding plain text message. Spam filters can still get hung up on heavily-coded emails, even though they've proven more effective in communicating a customized message to and eliciting ROI from email recipients. To ensure greater delivery success, simply set your plain text messages to "auto-generate", which triggers plain text to be generated (base don your HTML message) at the time of email sending. Details

7. Get certified in success.
Enroll in the Return Path Safe List program if you have a complaint rate of 0-0.1%. Once enrolled, your emails are sent from safe-listed IP addresses. Yahoo, as a primary example, prioritizes emails sent from listed IPs. Details

8. Anchor yourself in phrases only.
If you use click-tracking, you'll want to submit anchor text in phrases - not URLs. Spam filters can consider URL anchors as fraudulent and indicative of a phishing scam.

Good click-tracked link:
<a href="http://www.browniekitchen.com/">Visit our web site.</a>

Bad click-tracked link:
<a href="http://www.browniekitchen.com/">http://www.browniekitchen.com</a>


Here's what success looks like
Successful email campaign open rates are in the range of 15-35%. Take into consideration that some of your opens may not register if recipients have to 'view images'. But, if your rate is even higher than this, it's definitely reason to celebrate.

And if you're seeing lots of response to your behavioral goals (i.e. "click on this to get this deal/offer/information") then you also get a seat in the VIP section at Club Jango.

Already a rock star?
If you've had some amazing results from email campaigns and want to share them, tell us. We love to hear and share new tips to enhance email communications. Who knows? What you tell us today could be the next, new JangoMail feature we unleash tomorrow.

As always, give us a shout with any questions or comments. Until then, we leave you with a blast from the past commercial. We hope you've never met ANYONE like this:

When Good Emails Render Bad

Houston, you have a wingdings problem

Your email newsletter may have been conceived in love and raised under a watchful eye, but now it's talking in wingdings and ignoring every golden layout rule in Yahoo, Outlook and Gmail.

So, how do you teach it to play nice?


Exhale: HTML is still your baby
HTML email campaigns are not only more visually cohesive and polished than Plain Text, but historically also produce more clicks, consumer interest and traceable sales. It's obviously more appealing to show product pictures to your customers or include live links to relevant information. In addition, the DOS-reminiscent presentation of Plain Text is never a match for the brand-reflective power of HTML.

But if you're not following some simple Web Standards, your well-intentioned email campaigns can look like more of a maniacal bomb threat than a customized handshake.

5 tough love solutions for your HTML emails:

1. Avoid background images.
To efficiently separate content and design elements, images should be displayed inline. The CSS property, background-image is often not supported.

<background image: supported>

<background image: unsupported>

2. Keep FLOAT and CLEAR in proper balance.
FLOAT is the glue to your layout, while CLEAR ensures your FLOAT doesn't mask any images. If in doubt, avoid using FLOAT all together. Read more details here.

3. Be careful with your use of MARGIN and PADDING.
MARGIN alignment is the key to avoiding all-out text chaos in a bad render. PADDING is similarly critical, especially when used in conjunction with BACKGROUND-COLOR, LIST-STYLE-IMAGE and BORDER. Render test your emails first and find some fixes here.


4. Consider a different code to denote LINE SPACING.
To create a new line space, try using <br/> (shift+enter) instead of <p> (enter). Some readers push together new paragraphs, making your text look like this:

5. Don't ignore the importance of WIDTH and HEIGHT.
WIDTH directly impacts FLOAT and TEXT-ALIGN, so it's crucial to the overall look and tightness of your email. HEIGHT also lends a firm hand to overall readibility.


Phew - your HTMLs just avoided military school. But if they ever get out of line again - or you just want to learn more ways to enhance your email marketing - contact our JangoMail Support. We'd love to hear from you.

Have an idea for a future JangoMail blog? Talk to us

Improved Spam Detection for Response Emails

When we receive a response back on one of your email campaigns, we process and forward those on to you, based on a number of rules in your account Settings. We have just updated the spam detection for response emails we receive so we can prevent forwarding spam responses to you as much as we possibly can. How? We implemented a Spam Assassin filter to clean out the spam. Emails that are most obviously spam will now be rejected. Thus you'll be happy not to be receiving such email in your inbox anymore.

Note: You can manage your reply settings under Settings —> Reply Management —> Reply Handling