Do You Prefer Plain Text E-mail?
I used to really love Plain Text e-mail. I'm not just talking about e-mails without any formatting; I'm talking literally about e-mails which are sent in Plain Text format, without any HTML code in them.
In recent years, I've gotten over it, as HTML becomes the standard, and it actually becomes more and more difficult to read e-mails in Plain Text. My day-job, for example, forces me to use a signature at the bottom of every e-mail I send, and that signature contains images and hyperlinks behind buttons, etc. Many other companies do the same... sometimes without you, the employee, even knowing it, so even if you did send an e-mail in Plain Text, by the time your recipient receives it, it's been converted to HTML so that your corporate mail server can attach the signature.
Plus, many e-mail clients use HTML as the default way to display and send e-mails, and it can be very difficult, if not downright impossible, to configure it for Plain Text.
In recent weeks, though, it has occurred to me that I haven't given any thought to the Plain Text format of the e-mails I send to my mailing list. I did think about them years ago, when I first started, but back then I was using MailChimp; I had no idea what MailerLite did.
I went back to some of my old campaigns and tried to view the Plain Text version of the e-mail. The first thing I noticed was that there's no way to do that. None. MailerLite quite simply does not let you view the Plain Text version of a previously sent e-mail. So I created a new, dummy campaign, and then told MailerLite to show me the plain text e-mail that was about to be sent. This is what I saw:
Hello,
You have received a newsletter from Graham Downs.
However, your email software can't display HTML emails. You can view the newsletter by clicking here:
{$url}
You're receiving this newsletter because you have shown interest in Graham Downs.
Not interested anymore? Click here to unsubscribe:
{$unsubscribe}
Well, that's not ideal.
Still, it's probably not a big deal, because nobody's ever complained before, and I highly doubt any of my current subscribers are actually interested in the Plain Text versions of my newsletters. And at least MailerLite actually does provide you with a way to edit that version. I added it to my to-do list, and moved on.
Until the other day, when I saw someone subscribing to my list. I happen to know the guy, and I know that he definitely prefers to read all his e-mails in plain text.
I immediately went and carefully crafted Plain Text versions of all my automation mails, and from now on, will make sure all my campaigns have readable, usable Plain Text versions.
Even if I did it just for this guy, it's enough. But I'd like to hear from you - how do you feel about Plain Text e-mail? Do you still send and read e-mails in Plain Text? Is it your preferred format?
Hit me up in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you!
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Hey Steve,Well, yes, I WAS thinking of you when I conceived the post, but not only you. There are one or two other people who've replied to my new newsletter, saying that they appreciate the fact that I now provide a plain text only version of it. :-)
The problem with plain text, from a marketers perspective (although I suspect that you as the reader would consider that a GOOD thing) is that if you read my e-mails in plain text, I can't tell that you opened it in my reporting.
That's because all mailing list providers include a 1-pixel invisible image in the HTML e-mails they send, linked with a URL that's unique to you, and if that image is "displayed" on your computer, my reporting says you "opened" my e-mail.
Most mailing list providers actually suggest you periodically prune your subscribers, based on people who've never opened an e-mail from you. I used to do that, until I realised that a lot of people might actually be reading my e-mails in plain text, and unless they reply, I'd never know they were, in fact, carefully reading everything I send.
Nonetheless, this reporting thing is one reason why many mailing list providers DO default to the "You've received an e-mail, but it's HTML, so please click here to view it": if you click to view it, it DOES count as an open for purposes of reporting.
A lot depends on where you draw the line between marketing and spam. That one pixel thing is one of the reasons why I don't open e-mail in HTML -- to avoid giving spammers the satisfaction of knowing that someone has read their spam.
Stephen wrote: "A lot depends on where you draw the line between marketing and spam. That one pixel thing is one of the reasons why I don't open e-mail in HTML -- to avoid giving spammers the satisfaction of knowi..."I hear you. I tend to leave "Retrieving images" off by default in my mail client, and when I get an e-mail from someone I know I subscribed to, I'll add them to my Safe Senders list so it always loads the images from them.
Also because I know how it works behind the scenes, I want those people to see which of their mails I'm opening, so that a) they don't purge me from their list without my knowing, for being a non-opener, and b) [something I've also just started playing with myself, but another powerful feature from the marketer's perspective] they can make business decisions and add me into different automation sequences, based on which mails I've opened.
If I didn't sign up to receive e-mails from someone, I definitely do not want them knowing I've opened their e-mail. That's not really possible on webmail and mobile e-mail clients, though. :/
Graham wrote: "Stephen wrote: "A lot depends on where you draw the line between marketing and spam. That one pixel thing is one of the reasons why I don't open e-mail in HTML -- to avoid giving spammers the satis..."One thing that really annoys me is WordPress. They used to have a really useful service where people could reply to a blog post by filling in their name and address and a few other things on a form. They would send me the data from the form in an e-mail message, which I would save and process with a word processor macro and import straight into a database.
Then they started sending the results in HTML, e-mail, which complicated the process to such an extent that I just deleted them. Finally they made you go to a different web site and jump through lots of hoops to read the results, which were absolutely meaningless and useless, and in any case the notification e-mails were automatically rejected by my reader as "Junk and suspicious mail". So they too just got deleted. I haven't used their forms on any new blog posts, but occasionally people do find a form on an old post.
I'm pretty sure that 99% of the "one pixel" things I get are spam.
I can't comment on the Wordpress thing. I use blogger for my blog and Disqus for my comments. I've also never thought about actually capturing the names and e-mail address of everyone who comments (I don't think Disqus gives me access to their e-mail addresses anyway)....I'm pretty sure that 99% of the "one pixel" things I get are spam.
I... think I'm flattered, Steve. That is, if you consider my e-mail to be in the 1%, of course! ;-)
Well you asked if I wanted to receive your newsletter, and I said yes. Spam, is, by definition, unsolicited. The Wordpress thing wasn't to collect information from every comment, but rather a form people were asked to fill in see here About this Blog | Hayes & Greene family history
Oh, now I get it. Yes, I remember that form on your website, Steve. I never made the connection that it was a WordPress form, though.Nowadays, the best way to collect random ad-hoc information like that is Google Forms. It's how my "Favourite Books of All Time" forms were set up - as embedded Google Forms.
Results are saved in a Google Docs Spreadsheet which I can view anytime, and I can also set up the form to e-mail me for each individual reply.
You might want to consider replacing that WordPress form with a Google one, if people are still using it?
Thanks, will have to see if it is possible to embed Google forms into Wordpress.
My reader can render HTML mails, except for the ones that have idiotic things in the plain text versions like "Your client cannot read HTML mail, get another client". I just delete those.
And also my reader is set not to read "lazy html" -- that is, html that cannot be rendered by the reader itself, but goes to a distant site. These precautions have, at least so far, protected me from ransomware and other nasties lurking around.
If people want me to look at something on a distant site, they should just put in the URL and tell me what they want me to see if I click on it. Problem is that lots of URLs that come in e-mails nowadays at 5-6-7-9 lines long, and so have to be copied and pasted into a browser, because they don't follow the convention of enclosing long URLs in , and when I do copy and paste them, the browser tells me that the site's certificate has expired, so I'm rather glad my reader doesn't open the site automatically.