We’ve just given your email campaign reports a little more jazz by including a new overlay view, displaying the number of clicks that each of the links in your newsletter received. If you’ve struggled to determine the most popular links in your newsletter, we’ve made it a little easier by pasting easy to understand click stats over a preview of the HTML version of your campaign. This report is available in your account now, even for campaigns you’ve sent in the past!

Get better insight into link click activity

Using the new report, it’s easy to see exactly which links in your newsletter received the lion’s share of clicks. Not only do we display the percentage of unique clicks that were due to that link, but what that percentage equals in terms of unique clicks. For our template tags like “Forward to a Friend” and “Unsubscribe”, we display the absolute number of people who clicked on the link so you can instantly see how your design is performing.

Just go to your report section and select the ‘Link Activity & Overlay‘ option from the right sidebar to see it in action…

We hope you like it.

Team Beanz

As a follow-up to our previous article ‘Some email design guidelines‘ we thought we would impart a little more advice, this time focused on the actual dimensions of your message.

Because when designing an email newsletter, it is important to consider how the final result will be seen by the  recipients.

Design widths – why fixed?

You may have noticed that most newsletters you receive nowadays have a fixed width, and do not expand automatically to fill the whole of your preview pane, often leaving borders on the left and right. This ‘non-fluid’ layout is used deliberately to cater for the different types of email client. Due to the fact that almost all mail programs use parts of the screen to display menus, or in the case of web-based clients (Gmail, Hotmail etc); adverts, the area remaining to display the actual message can be limited.

With this in mind, it is a good idea to format your emails with a fixed width, somewhere around the 600 pixels mark. Most of the time, this will also prevent the horizontal scroll bar from showing up, allowing your readers to concentrate more on reading your email as you intended.

Get the message across – early!

Just because we recommend that you limit the width of your message, we are not telling you to limit the height, or indeed the content.

However, it’s worth keeping in mind that a lot of your recipients may scan your email in a preview pane (which can be around 300-500 pixels high) before they decide to read the entire thing. So make sure you include the more important points in this first part.

Remember, your recipients are busy and impatient.

So, first impressions count.

Don’t forget that here at Mailbeanz.com we can create and customize fantastic email campaigns for you that not only look great but are specifically designed for HTML email and are guaranteed to get you and your product noticed, so if you think you’d like our help getting your message out there, don’t hesitate to contact us. Alternatively,  set-up your own free mailbeanz account and get sowing your beanz straight away!

Although we announced it a little while back we thought we’d spend a little time showing you round our new mobile optimized version of Mailbeanz that gives you quick access to your reports on any campaigns you’ve sent. It’s fast, looks great and is available now. Just head to your account on any popular mobile device like an iPhone or Android and the mobile version will be shown by default. You don’t need to install anything, because it is a web application, not a native phone application.

Here’s a quick preview of how it looks on an iPhone:

With a focus on reporting

When deciding what functionality to include in the mobile version, we decided to focus our efforts on the most popular section of your account – namely, your reports. Added to this, more than 95% of all our mobile visitors come in on an iPhone or iPhone variant, so we decided to put a lot of work into making sure the experience was perfect on these devices in particular. It’s a really nice way to get the latest stats on a campaign you’ve sent in a couple of thumb presses.

Launch it like a real application

One great thing about the iPhone is that you can launch web applications just like a traditional app you’ve bought from the App Store. By heading into your account with Safari and adding it to your Home screen, you have a dedicated button that will load your latest reports with a single click. We even provide a nice mail-envelope-thingy icon and loading screen for you while the latest stats are downloading.

Easy switching

While the Mailbeanz mobile version is all about your reports right now, you can still switch to the full version of Mailbeanz and access all its functionality with a single click. At the footer of every page is a link to switch to the corresponding page in the full version of the app. Don’t worry, we’ll automatically switch you back to the mobile version the next time you log in from the home screen.

Enjoy
Team Beanz

Alright, now that you’re getting to grips with our Mailbeanz email marketing solution we’ve had a few requests on how to get the most out of our design methods. Indeed, as web designers, we’ve grown pretty good at understanding how to create a modern, semantic, accessible websites using XHTML and CSS and we understand what makes a good website, and how to make it happen.

When it comes time to design emails though, do all the same rules apply? Are there things that you should be doing specifically for email that don’t make sense on a website? So, in this article we’ll discuss the technical, design and information elements that make up a successful Mailbeanz HTML email.

The quick and dirty guidelines

If you want to dive right in and just need some direction, here’s the outline:

• Don’t waste your readers’ time – An email inbox is a busy place, you won’t get much attention.
• Permission matters – Not only do you need to have permission to email people, but it helps to remind them of how they gave you permission, as specifically as you can.
• Relevance trumps permission – Just having permission is not enough, the content you’re going to be sending must also be relevant.
• Make unsubscribing easy – There’s no point emailing people who are not interested.
• Image blocking is common – You can’t rely on people actually seeing your images.
• Don’t overlook your plain text version – You can make blocks of text more readable.
• and test it before you send it – It’s the only way to be confident about your design working.

Don’t waste your readers’ time

An email inbox is a very noisy environment, with calendars, notes and folders all competing with the actual emails for space. Given that your reader may only ever see your subject line before deciding whether to read your email, you can’t afford to waste time.

So make sure that your emails show right away why they are worth reading. Consider starting with a succinct table of contents to help decide whether they should read on.

Permission matters

There are a multitude of laws that apply to commercial email dependent on your location, but the one rule that applies almost everywhere is that you absolutely must have permission to send people bulk email. In most cases, it also makes sense to remind people about how they gave you that permission.

Particularly if you don’t send emails very often, or the signup was for a competition (for example) people can forget that they actually asked to receive email. A short message at the top of your email can help people remember, and make them more likely to read on.

You can also use our custom fields tools to personalise your permission reminder. So if you have multiple sources of permission, be explicit; don’t just say “your address was subscribed to our list” tell them why their address was subscribed to your list. Let them know where they signed up and how they can opt-out. This can go a long way towards reducing potential spam complaints.

Here’s an example of a simple, contextual reminder that people gave their permission when visiting a trade show booth:

Recent email consumer surveys have shown that “knowing and trusting the sender” was the biggest influence on whether emails are opened, narrowly beating out “previously opened and thought valuable”.

So consistently reminding your readers who you are, and why they should trust you can make a big difference to your open rate.

Relevance trumps permission

Even more than having permission, it is vital that you are sending valuable, relevant information to your subscribers. That means not sending information to everyone on your list just because you can. Consider carefully whether the information is both useful to them, and what they are expecting from you.

Make unsubscribing easy

There’s no point emailing people who are not interested in your content any more. If it is no longer relevant to them, let them just unsubscribe easily. Forcing people to play ‘hunt the unsubscribe link’ will only irritate them, and is likely to end up with spam complaints.

This is unfortunately a common approach to permission reminders and unsubscribe links. Much better to make it clear and prominent; that way if they do decide in the future they need the information you offer, they will have confidence in signing up again.

Image blocking is common

In many of the major email clients, including Microsoft Outlook, AOL and Gmail, your images will not be shown by default. Your readers will have to click another link or button to make them download and display. Your readers will initially see the email on the left below displayed as shown on the right.

So no matter how perfectly you choose your imagery, it may have no impact, or a negative impact on the success of your email. As you can see above, your email can appear totally empty, so never design an email using all images. Always ensure that you have copy available in your HTML part, as well as the plain text.

Of course, as many as 30% of your subscribers might not even realize they can choose to show images. An unknown percentage just won’t bother. So you can’t rely on people actually seeing your images at all.

To ensure your emails still work even without the images showing, you can make a few simple improvements:

• Never use images for important content like headlines, links and any calls to action.
• Add a text-based link to your web version of your design at the top of your email.
• Get added to your recipient’s address book or whitelist.
• Use ‘alt text’ for all images for a better experience in Gmail etc.
• Test your design with images turned off before you send it.

Don’t forget your plain text version

Bear in mind that although that shiny happy HTML version may be beautiful, not everyone can view HTML emails, or wants to. Blackberry users, for example, will mostly see your plain text version. So we’ve made it easy for you in Mailbeanz by providing a quick start to your plain text version. With just the click of a link the text from your HTML email will be carried over to the plain text version.

Don’t stop there though. Make sure you review your plain text version. Although our import tool is pretty slick it’s not perfect. Your plain text version needs a human set of eyes on it to make sure the formatting is perfect and all the content you want to include is included.

Then don’t forget to test, test, test!

This one can’t be emphasized enough. On top of your client’s main lists, why not also add a small test list possibly consisting of yourself and your client’s email address? You want to make sure you receive what your recipients are receiving to ensure you know about any problems that may arise.

If you’re having trouble, don’t forget we’ve included a bunch of help files to get you polished up and these are always available at the top right of your control panel.

Tip: Get inspiration for great HTML email designs

There is plenty of great email design being done out in the world, so there is no shortage of creative inspiration. But if you’re struggling with a blank canvas why not sign up for the newsletters of companies in your industry, to see how other people are approaching it?

Should you want a bespoke template designing for you or you have a design you’d like us to convert into a great email design and upload it to your Mailbeanz account, please get in touch to discuss your requirements.

Good Luck,
Team Beanz