HTML email ?

[bitsnstuff]

Does anyone know where I could get details on how to set up an HTML email, so that I can send marketing messages which look like my site?

My designer can do this, but if it isn't too tricky, I would like to learn how to do it myself.

[Rob Holmes]

Hi,

Just use an HTML editor like Dreamweaver, Frontpage or even frontpage express (if you want a copy of FP Express I can give you one)

Test it on yourself and a friend first - making sure all links start with http:// and include the full path to each image and webpage or they won't work when you send them out.

Hope this helps,

Rob

[bitsnstuff]

Thank you for your message Matrixx.

I set up my site with Actinic, does that mean I can copy the theme/format into Frontpage, as I do have a copy?

[Rob Holmes]

Hmm that depends if you have active content on the pages.. I've never used Actinic so I don't know.

Personally I'd just create a similar looking HTML template and then add your content.

Rob

[Rob Holmes]

At risk of a totally raw and unashamed plug..

If you need some decent email marketing software you are welcome to try http://www.ecust.co.uk

Rob

[epiphany]

Here is a totally newb friendly way to do it :)


Get your web designer to create a page of your site with a marketing message on it.

Access that page through IE.

file>send>page via email (send it to yourself)

Then you will get the webpage in your email box and you can forward it to whom ever you want whenever you want :)

It pays to insert a hidden message at the top of the html that says something like "if you can see a lot of code you have html turned off, please go to this address to see the details you have been sent in this email"

a lot of newsletters don't do that and a lot of people don't have HTML turned on, bad combination :)

[bitsnstuff]

Brilliant - what a great idea!

Thank you very much Epiphany :lol:

[Rigs]

There's one tip - if you send any picture with your HTML make sure they're not sent as an attachment, but that they actually point onto your website. 80% of the email clients don't display them properly if they're attached to the email. That's a lesson I've learned the hard way after sending an email to 800 people and they couldn't see the pictures :-p

Also always include a text version of your html, some browser or email clients do not like all html emails, they consider them to be spam.

[epiphany]

Actually that's a point tell your web designer to make sure all images used on the page you are going to be sending have their full extensions.

for instance instead of

images/whatever.gif

you would have

http://www.sitename.co.uk/images/whatever.gif

this means that when someone is viewing the page the email client knows where to look for the images.

[Webstuff]

I don't use any specific mail app's, so I'm not sure how well they handle converting HTML to a mail-friendly document; try sending this to several different email accounts to see how they handle it. Its also worth providing a plain-text doctype for those who do not allow HTML emails.

Theres no magic involved - just some Content-type declarations and Mime-message boundaries. Simple, eh?

[Webstuff]

and as an addendum to epiphany's post;

Images can be part of the email if they're base64 encoded.