Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Tips For Phasing Out Text E-mail List

Posted by Anonymous on 8/6/2007 at 4:16 PM ET 125 Points
For many years we have maintained both text and HTML versions of our e-mails and send them out separately. We give customers the choice on signup if they would like text or HTML, and the text list is minuscule to the HTML list. It had gotten to the point where it has become hard to justify maintaining the text list when the HTML is the one generating all the traffic and sales.

Has anyone done this before? I am trying to find the most graceful way of doing this. The most obvious thing would be to e-mail the text list and notify them of the change, and give them a chance to opt into the HTML list. I'm just wondering if there is a good approach to it, one that does not sound like we no longer want to cater to their preference anymore (after all, we did give them a choice).

Any tips would be appreciated!

Patrick
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by michael on 8/6/2007 at 4:28 PM Accepted
    Patrick,

    We usually have the opposite result...text over html.

    I would suggest a simple email that asks them the reason they choose text vs html. They may be aware of a hyper-sensitive firewall or they may have been instructed to only accept text OR they don't realize html is not "riddled with ad-ware"

    Michael
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 8/6/2007 at 7:59 PM Member
    Stop sending text, send HTML, but have as the start of the email "If you can't read this email, click on the following link" (which is an http address of a page on your website). This will move the HTML to displaying in their browser instead of their email. Test this on a small sample first to make sure that it works adequately.

    Another suggestion: try sending your emails as plain text + HTML. Here's an article describing how this could work (and again, test it before sending it to ALL of your email list): https://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/html-email-multi.htm
  • Posted by Chris Blackman on 8/6/2007 at 9:23 PM Member
    I agree with Jay's suggestion: 'Stop sending text, send HTML, but have as the start of the email "If you can't read this email, click on the following link".'

    If you use Elite e-mail (which for my (small) list is extremely cost-effective) it does this for you AUTOMATICALLY.

    Hope that helps

    ChrisB
  • Posted on 8/7/2007 at 10:46 AM Author
    Thank you everyone for your feedback. We do already include a link to the web based version at the e-mail which is definitely helpful.

    I have also toyed with the HTML/TXT combo e-mails, but I believe it only serves them text if their e-mail client does not support HTML, so it does not help if the subscriber just does not prefer HTML.

    Thanks again for everyone that took the time to respond,

    Patrick
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