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

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.