Author: Adrian Young

Email Marketing

8 ways coding skills make you a better marketer

4 minute read
Adrian Young Adrian Young

Marketing is a profession of contrasts where the creative blends with the analytical. Scope for imagination sits alongside the need for logic.

In today’s digital world, there are few careers that cannot benefit from some coding know-how. Marketing is no exception. A little bit of programming knowledge could be the secret code to becoming a better marketer.

1. Transform your mind

Learning to code isn’t just about what you can do. It’s about the way you think. There are direct benefits from learning a particular programming language, but it’s perhaps the indirect benefits that are most valuable.

Speaking from personal experience, my approach to problem-solving fundamentally changed after learning JavaScript. When a complex challenge arises, my reaction is no longer oh [expletive], how are we going to solve this. The logic-based thinking that comes with coding can be applied to all manner of situations. A calmer thought process means less stress and more refined solutions.

2. Embrace efficiency

Who couldn’t use a little more time in the day? Repetitive (but still essential) tasks can add up and chip away at the clock, stealing away time from bigger projects.

Taking a programming approach to such jobs can make all the difference. The solution doesn’t necessarily need to involve a single line of code – just a bit of logic. Instead of manually compiling reports, is there an Excel formula that can achieve the same thing in a fraction of the time? Maybe you could record an action in Photoshop to apply a branding effect in a single click. An ounce of automation is worth a pound of manual procedure.

3. Become the toolmaker

Tailoring or modifying an existing piece of software won’t always be enough to solve your problem. For unique challenges, you sometimes need a unique tool. With programming knowledge, you can be the one to create it.

A client of ours required tracking to be hardcoded on links in a very specific manner. The syntax varies depending on the URL. What descriptors have already been used? Is there an anchor tag? Are other parameters already applied?

Manually performing such a task multiple times per day and dozens per week is both time-consuming and vulnerable to human error. The smart solution is to build a custom tool to do the job. Efficient and reliable results, along with the satisfaction and mental exercise that coding brings.

4. Master your software

It’s true what they say – once you learn one programming language, it becomes much easier to learn another. Modern CRM platforms and ESPs often come equipped with proprietary scripting languages. Salesforce Marketing Cloud has AMPscript, Oracle Responsys has RPL, and so on. These kind of scripting languages invariably open up a deeper level of dynamic content than a drag & drop interface can offer.

The syntax of these languages differs from platform to platform, but the underlying logic is very similar. Everything boils down to if this, do that. By thinking in terms of procedures and variables, you unlock your software’s full functionality – and value.

5. Talk tech

As a marketer, you may or may not ever be personally required to carry out any coding work. But even if your role is less hands-on, I’m willing to bet that you need to communicate with developers regularly. Knowing what is technically possible and how it can be achieved is a major advantage. A new project is off to a great start when everyone is working from the same technical foundation.

6. Unify the channels

There are lots of specialities in marketing, including our favourite: email. Specialised however is not synonymous with isolated. A strong marketing strategy combines multiple channels.

Theory is one thing, but technical understanding completes the picture. An email developer can benefit greatly from knowing a programming language that lets them build web content or process data. A custom API can connect software systems and make sophisticated multi-channel strategies possible. Your programming knowledge can be the bridge between channels and applications.

7. Become a journey planner

Multi-channel marketing is a concept that goes hand-in-hand with customer journeys. Any decent CRM or ESP software will include a workflow-based editor that lets you funnel and personalise the path that each customer follows. These can become enormously complex, often combining drag & drop rules with internal and external scripting.

Learning programming act as a logical conditioning for the mind. Use that power to plan, analyse and fine-tune complex customer journeys.

8. Stay at the cutting edge

Digital marketing is a fast-moving field. It can be challenging to stay on top of the latest developments. But with a coding foundation, it becomes easier to keep up… and maybe even be a pioneer.

I’ve seen a number of technical landmarks in email marketing over the years. Responsive design, product recommendations, live images, interactivity, Gmail annotations, AMP for Email, AI-generated content – the list goes on. Adoption rates can often be slow. Teach yourself some technical skills on the side and you can be the one to keep your brand at the digital forefront.

Crack the code

One of the beautiful things about coding is that you absolutely do not need to know a language inside-out before you can start putting it to good use in the real world. In fact, real projects are an essential part of the learning process. With just a moderate understanding of a single programming language, you can improve yourself as a marketer and make a real difference in a relatively short space of time.

Your choice of language doesn’t even matter. Python, PHP, JavaScript, whatever you fancy. They all have practical applications and cognitive benefits. So jump in, learn some code, and power up your marketing.

Email Marketing

Beyond the subject line: your inbox marketing toolkit

3 minute read
Adrian Young Adrian Young

Your email subject line has a tough job. With just a few words, it needs to:

  • Grab the reader’s attention
  • Tell them something useful

That’s a big ask, given that perhaps only around 40 characters will be visible on mobile. There’s only so much screen space before you hit the triple dots of truncation.

Example of a subject line truncated on mobile

But that’s okay, because your subject line isn’t alone out there.

Preview text

Message previews – or preheaders as they’re widely and perhaps erroneously called in the marketing world – pull some opening text content from your email into the inbox. That lets the user see some information up-front before deciding if an email is worth opening. The number of characters pulled into the preview varies depending on device and email client.

Brands commonly use the preview text as a secondary subject line of sorts. This is often combined with a trick to blank out any trailing content such as nav bar links, thus making it look neat and tidy in the inbox. It’s worth mentioning that Apple Mail recently disabled this trick as it essentially suppresses the message preview’s originally intended functionality.

In any case, the message preview is valuable pre-open content for you to work with. Use it in conjunction with your subject line to inform the reader rather than bait them.

Sender name

Well, that’s done already is it not? Sender is your brand name, and that’s that. Not necessarily!

There’s some flexibility in your sender name. Adding an individual’s name, where relevant and true, can add a personal touch. Person at YourBrand might just give your emails a more human touch than YourBrand alone.

The sender name can also be tailored to the nature of the email. A separate sender name for editorial emails like newsletters can help to distinguish them from purely marketing content. The Biz @ The Email Factory for instance!

BIMI

I killed some time on a flight recently by playing a logo quiz on my phone. Our ability to recognise and recall logos, or even portions thereof, is proof of their power. A brand’s logo is its face, and our brains are masterful at processing faces.

That brings us to BIMI: Brand Indicators for Message Identification. Appropriately for an acronym that sounds a bit like “be me”, this is a means of showing your brand logo in the inbox. The instant power of brand recognition could be the deciding factor between open and ignore.

Mock-up of a logo shown via BIMI

Annotations

Gmail has built-in functionality that allows marketers to show additional content in the promotions tab. These are known as email annotations. They come in two main flavours.

Deals let you show an offer – perhaps a discount – completely separate from your subject line. An optional offer code, start and end date round it off. After all, your customer cares about what your email has to offer them. Everything else is just wrapping.

Product carousels are perfect for retailers. A horizontally scrollable array of products, browsable and clickable without ever having to open the email.

It’s worth mentioning that senders must first contact Google for approval before these features become available. If you don’t ask, you don’t get!

Emojis

Love them or hate them, emojis are a part of internet life. Although they’re not a piece of inbox anatomy like the items above, emojis are so distinct from traditional alphanumeric copywriting that they deserve special mention.

There is some evidence to suggest that emojis in subject lines can increase email open rates. That statement would carry a lot more weight were it not for the presence of “some” and “can”. Ultimately, like most aspects of marketing, it depends. It depends on your brand, your choice of emoji, how often you use them, your creativity.

Used correctly – whatever that may mean for your brand – emojis can pair with creative copywriting in an engaging way. Just be sure not to use too many, or interrupt sentences. Accessibility matters.

A collective effort

It’s reassuring to see that the competition for inbox attention isn’t solely determined by the subject line. In fact, it may not even be the most important factor in determining opens. The life of a subject line isn’t such a lonely one after all.

Email Marketing

A quick guide to email pop-up culture

5 minute read
Adrian Young Adrian Young

Excuse me! I’m an email subscription pop-up. I hope you don’t mind the interruption. You can tell me to go away, if you like… or you can pop in your address and look forward to some juicy content in your inbox. Does a 15% discount sweeten the deal?

Modern websites are full of things popping up. Cookie permission(ugh), app downloads, browser notifications. And of course email subscription pop-ups. Let’s take a closer look at the latter.

But aren’t pop-ups annoying?

Yes, they are. People hate pop-ups. I’m not using the H-word for dramatic effect. G2’s survey on the topic found that over 80% of respondents felt that strongly. By contrast, fewer than 5% expressed positive feelings towards pop-ups.

So why use them? Because they work! The average email pop-up converts nearly 4% of website visitors. And that can’t be chalked up to people who were going to subscribe regardless. Pop-ups offer a 100% increase in subcriptions when compared to a static sign-up box. The stats don’t lie – pop-ups are worthwhile.

Take a pop-up at it

We’ve established that email pop-ups are simultaneously annoying but effective. Ultimately any annoyance is likely to be short-lived, whereas the benefits for those who subscribe are ongoing. I know I don’t hold a grudge against thatgoddamnwebsite.com for the time it asked me if I’d like to receive a newsletter.

The aforementioned survey backs this thinking up. The primary reason for pop-up hatred is that “they’re everywhere”. That’s a factor of ubiquity that is neither focused on nor controlled by any one brand. A single pop-up on a single website is no big deal.

Still, this doesn’t mean that your pop-up should be slapped onto your website without a plan. Apply a bit of strategy and you can mitigate the annoyance factor while squeezing out a few more conversions. Here’s what to consider.

Content with context

It’s useful to remind oneself that a pop-up is part of the website, and not some detached entity. Its content can change, both contextually and periodically. As with all content, if you can personalise it to the user in some way, great.

That personalisation could be a simple as page-specific wording. Is the user browsing a particular department on your website? Focus on that. Are you able to track where the user came from, or what they’ve been doing on your site? That’s some pop-up-tailoring data at your disposal.

Lovely bit of copywriting from theme park Holiday World’s pop-up

Something for your trouble

Time on the internet passes in a sped-up form, like some kind of digital dog years. Every second is valuable. Signing up may only take a few moments, but dismissing a pop-up is even quicker. It’s seconds versus milliseconds.

An incentive helps to swing the odds a little. For retailers, that often takes the form an introductory discount. Entry into a prize draw is an alternative. If yours isn’t an ecommerce business, you could offer a white paper in exchange for subscribing.

Fruit and veg grocer Abel & Cole offers new subscribers a 50% discount on their first offer. And, hey, their 4th as well. Nice.

An opportunity to learn

What you ask the user to input into a pop-up box is up to you. Email of course is essential. Customer name is optional.

But how about interest checkboxes? Your data on an imminent subscriber could be meagre to non-existent, and we all know how valuable personalisation is in email marketing. Giving people the means to tailor their emails up-front is a great way to get to know your subscribers better.

Fashion retailer Peacocks lets the customer choose what kind of content to receive.

Feeling triggered

There are several ways to make a pop-up pop up. Instant, time-based, scroll-based, exit intent, click-based. Each of those has a range of options to consider. How many seconds should elapse before the message appears? How far down the page is sufficient? Are multiple triggers appropriate? It’s probably worth mentioning that Wisepop’s stats on pop-up conversion rates hugely favour click-based triggers.

You don’t necessarily need to think within the scope of a single page. A global pop-up plan could be just what you need. Perhaps you want to set off on the right foot and leave the pop-up until the user has clicked onto a second page.

Design considerations

Pop-up designs come in various forms. The most popular is an in-your-face middle-of-the-screen prompt. Some variations even go for broke and fill the entire viewport. A more subtle option is to slide a box or tab in from an edge of the screen, quietly requesting attention rather than demanding it.

There’s also a clever hybrid design that blends aspects of a static sign-up box and a pop-up. Place a sign-up box somewhere on the page, and highlight it as the user scrolls past. A glow effect, a wobble animation – there are plenty of creative options.

Fenwick’s email pop-up is particularly uninstrusive. A little tab peaks in, with succinctly transparent copy. Interact or ignore as you wish.

Don’t give up to soon…

A lot of websites have a single email pop-up. Dismiss it, and that’s that – at least until the cookie that suppresses it expires.

But it’s very easy for a user to instinctively dismiss a pop-up the moment it appears. Just because the user zapped it this time, doesn’t mean that they won’t ever be interested. Creating a series of infrequent pop-ups – distributed across a series of days or weeks – gives you additional chances to gain a subscriber.

…but know when to stop

A series of two or three pop-ups is fine. But stop before asking becomes pleading. You’ll also want to consider what the user is currently doing. A disruptive message springing up while watching a video or filling out a form is likely to cross the line from annoying to infuriating.

Always include an easy-to-find static sign-up box somewhere on your website in addition to any pop-ups. Minds can be changed!

Don’t guess. Test

If ever there was a piece of website content that can benefit from comparitive A/B testing, it’s a subscription pop-up. Put a plan in place to test a theory, give it time to gather statistically significant results, and discover what your visitors respond best to.

Continuing the theme of testing – don’t forget to test that the pop-up displays properly across a range of browsers and devices! While trawling the internet for example pop-ups, I found a surprising number that failed visually or functionally in some way. Some had truncated text or unintended partial scrolling, others clashed with cookie pop-ups and were accidentally dismissed alongside them.

Don’t forget to say hello

Your pop-up is just one of many landmarks in your customer journey. Don’t leave new subs hanging – greet them with a welcome email and let them know their subscription matters.

And now it’s time to say goodbye. Thanks for popping in.

Email Design

Three experimental CSS effects to spice up your emails

2 minute read
Adrian Young Adrian Young

Three experimental CSS effects to spice up your emails

CSS is the technology that makes the web pretty. It’s also used in email, albeit in a more primitive and fragmented form. A lack of universal support for the more modern features of CSS means that email developers tend to stick to the basics.

And that’s a pity, because some fancy CSS effects could mean the difference between plain-old-email and something that truly stands out. Let’s break with convention and think outside the (in)box.

Fixed positioning

One of the primary roles of CSS is layout. On a web page, an element can be set to a fixed position. While the rest of the page scrolls, that particular element stays put. That can be handy for components of an interface in a web app, for example.

Fixed positioning doesn’t work properly in email, not even in the otherwise ever-reliable Apple Mail. But luckily the email industry is home to some bright sparks who love to push the boundaries of the medium. Email on Acid’s Halloween email features a clever workaround for fixed positioning, originally conceived by Mark Robbins.

Being able to place an element independent of scrolling opens up a host of creative options. Here’s an example we knocked together based on the same principle:

Parallax scrolling

Those who owned a Nintendo in the 90s will perhaps remember this term. Before home technology had the muscle to render true 3D graphics, programmers used a variety of clever tricks to create an illusion of depth.

One of these techniques was parallax scrolling. The concept is simple. Graphics are placed on separate layers. ‘Distant’ objects move slowly, while ‘nearer’ objects move quickly. It lends the feeling of a third dimension to an otherwise two‑dimensional environment.

That brings us to the the perspective attribute in CSS. A web page, or part of it, can be pulled into a third axis. The result is layering of content that exists in different planes, and thus scroll at their own pace. Hello illusion of depth:

3D objects

Let’s continue the theme of three dimensions. CSS isn’t only capable of layering items. It can rotate them in 3D space. That means, with a bit lot of effort, a developer can sculpt and manipulate 3D objects. Check out some examples in this YouTube video.

These are impressive feats for sure. But so too is constructing a replica of the Eiffel Tower using only matches and glue. Complex 3D in CSS is a labour of love, not something you’ll be knocking together for Tuesday’s marketing email. So let’s think about something that could realistically be implemented in an email. How about a greetings card? That’s two rectangles, pivoting around a fold.

By combining this idea with some interactive triggers (also courtesy of some experimental CSS), a subscriber could manipulate a customised greetings card:

Oh, and that laminated sheen on the cover is achieved by sliding a white gradient across the surface. Lovely!

Are these effects really useable?

Full disclosure: pushing the limits of CSS in email is going to present you with compatibility and accessibility problems. Not insurmountable ones, but ones that will take effort to overcome. You’ll need to think about fallback content and graceful degradation. You might even want to give people the option to specifically opt in or out of such mailings.

We reckon the payoff is worth the effort for visually‑driven, energetic brands. And, hey, not only do you spice up your email – you also play a role in evolving the medium of email.

Email Marketing

Are your emails ethical?

3 minute read
Adrian Young Adrian Young

Alcohol makes you attractive! Vaping is cool! Some marketing is obviously unethical.

But most unethical marketing isn’t so cartoonishly blatant. Not only can it be unknown to the customer, but even the marketer may not necessarily be aware that they’re doing anything wrong. So, how do we make sure our emails are morally sound?

Defining unethical

Firstly, let’s agree on what is meant by unethical. Merriam‑Webster defines the word as:

not conforming to a high moral standard

And in turn, moral is defined as:

conforming to a standard of right behavior

So we’re dealing with right and wrong, good and bad. A subjective topic to an extent, and one with blurry boundaries.

With regards specifically to the ethics of marketing, let’s refer to some third party sources. Forbes, Kendrick PR and Brafton are among the top results when searching for the topic. They all agree that misleading information is unethical. Some other factors include the incitement of controversy, marketing without consent, and exploitation of emotions.

Tell the truth

Honesty is a recurring theme in the ethics of marketing. No legitimate marketer would misrepresent a product. Or would they?

You don’t have to make outright false claims about a product to be dishonest about it. It’s not uncommon to employ Photoshop or other trickery to simulate – and likely exaggerate – a product’s properties. That de-ageing cream works wonders… in the digital realm!

Or what about the offer itself? A get‑it‑while‑it‑lasts 24‑hour sale certainly creates a sense of urgency, especially under the ominous presence of a countdown clock ticking down to zero. But if the offer’s surprise extension is pre‑planned, then it is dishonest. A lie is a lie.

Your customer is not a fish

So don’t bait them. A misleading or vague subject line might lure some openers. But ultimately that does customers a disservice. If the big surprise turns out to be a little disappointing, then people rightfully may not be so tempted next time.

It’s respectful to the customer to be transparent in subject lines and message previews. State the offer up-front and let the reader – a human being – make their own decision.

Accept disinterest

Subscribers come and go. But they don’t always close the door when they’re leaving. It’s good practice for various reasons to ultimately remove inactive subscribers from your mailing lists.

Strive to make emails for everyone

Somehow we’re in the mid-2020s and accessibility is still often skimped on or outright ignored in email. Image-heavy emails with insufficient alt tags, a confusing tab order and lack of semantic code are not uncommon.

Worryingly, there is sometimes an attitude based on pre‑conceived notions of the audience’s level of ability. Our readers are young and hip – we don’t need to worry about accessibility! Don’t be that marketer.

Even in a hypothetical and statistically-impossible scenario where 100% of a company’s mailing list is completely able, there’s an important point to remember: an accessible email is a better email for everybody.

Take the bad with the good

Don’t take our word for it… take the word of these glowing customer reviews that we have cherry‑picked! For a more balanced and believable view, a link to Trustpilot along with a live score combines the powers of brand advocacy and honesty. Bad reviews will naturally happen from time to time. Take it as an opportunity to show the world how you put a problem right.

Some fundamental contradictions

I mentioned earlier that the customer is not a fish. And yet this is an industry in which hook is an accepted piece of terminology.

Kendrick PR cites fearmongering as an unethical marketing practice. But marketers swear by FOMO – the fear of missing out.

Similarly, Brafton criticises the triggering of negative emotions as a means of manipulating consumer decisions. What is fear if not negative?

Does it matter?

Honesty may be the best policy, but is it good for business? If relatively minor sins help to bring in the numbers, and customers aren’t even aware of being played, then it could even be perceived that there’s no harm done. Doing the right thing might not always be a sufficient motivator when there’s pressure to hit targets.

But what if a company can earn a reputation for transparency? What if customers become aware of one brand’s honesty in the face of their competitors’ tricks? Maybe that’s hoping for some unrealistic karmic justice, or maybe it’s something worth striving for.

Artificial intelligence

Humanised email marketing in the age of AI

3 minute read
Adrian Young Adrian Young

We live in the age of artificial intelligence. Sort of. More accurately, we live in the age of algorithmic content‑generation.

Computer programmes can write copy, draw pictures and generate code in seconds. Again: sort of. The intelligence aspect of AI is very overstated – these programmes have no actual understanding of what they’re doing. Therefore they are blissfully emotionlessly unaware when errors occur in their output. And those errors can be both glaring and numerous.

This of course is a technology in its early stages. With a human at the helm, to guide and refine, it can already be used to great effect. So what happens as the technology develops, and the need for human input becomes less and less?

Marketing by machines

Computer programmes can analyse customer behaviour and serve up unique one‑to‑one content in email marketing. The scale, speed and accuracy far exceeds the capabilities of any human marketing department.

For years this has primarily meant product recommendations. These often take the form of a block of personalised content within an otherwise static email. As we move into a more sophisticated era of content generation, it’s not far‑fetched to imagine entirely computer‑authored emails tailored to each unique customer’s preferences from top to bottom.

Be contactable

Email is – or at least should be – a two-way communication medium. All too often however, companies send marketing emails from no-reply addresses. It’s a closed door, and tells the customer: our message matters, yours does not.

As marketing becomes increasingly robotic, leave that door open instead. Give your customer the reassurance of accessible human help.

Join the conversation

Social media is the perfect medium to humanise your brand. Reply to comments, good or bad. Show a sense of humour. Let the world see that there’s a human presence behind the corporate facade.

Likewise, don’t let negative feedback or complaints go unanswered. Nothing puts me off a company like cookie‑cutter replies to bad reviews on Trustpilot. Turn negative into positive by demonstrating a human solution when things go wrong.

A matter of preference

Machine-learning is powerful. But an algorithm will never know your customer better than they know themselves. That’s why a preference centre remains an excellent starting point for personalised email content.

A tick‑the‑box preference form gives customers an easy way to tell you their interests. The obvious benefit is more relevant email content. The less obvious but equally important benefit is the message it sends about the value you place on human choice.

Turn customer into creator

You can create content for your marketing emails. Machines can create content for your marketing emails. But you know who else can create content? Your subscribers.

Invite your customers to share photos or other content themed around your products. Perhaps tie it to a competition. Incorporate this content into marketing emails and suddenly they have more of a community feel rather than corporate.

Everyone gets a vote

Continuing the topic of subscriber interaction – why not encourage engagement through surveys? A simple click‑to‑vote system can be tied to a database at the back end. And let’s keep that two-way communication in mind – current results can be shown via images generated in real time.

The benefits are numerous. Customers see that their opinions are valued. Surveys serve as an insight into consumer behaviour. And your emails become an engaging, living thing.

Be individual

Authentic human content is going to become increasingly uncommon… and increasingly valued. A unique brand voice will be more important than ever.

But why stop at brand level? A company is made up of individuals. Opinion pieces by team members or guest content by industry experts can give your emails a captivating human touch.

The value of authenticity

Generative AI is a fascinating development of the digital age. Anyone can become artist or author or musician at the push of a button. And yet when that work is devoid of effort and meaning, it becomes a kind of creative candy not worthy of perusal. Does that matter when the purpose is marketing rather than self expression? Does it matter when the desired output is a catchy pop song rather than a heartfelt ballad? What happens when it becomes impossible to discern between the creations of a human and a computer? This is a technology that raises many questions across all aspects of human life.

Bringing the focus back to email marketing – it’s important to keep up‑to‑date with technological developments. But perhaps the best marketing in the coming years will be that makes a real human connection with customers.

Email Marketing

Goodbye email preheader?

3 minute read
Adrian Young Adrian Young

Subject lines have a tough job. They’re the front line of email marketing. With just a few words, and possibly an emoji or two, they need to capture your customer’s attention and relay some useful information.

Thankfully they’re not alone out there. Your sender name plays a part. Maybe you’ve introduced Gmail annotations. And of course your trusty preheader is always there to back up your subject.

Why, then, has Apple taken steps to change how it works?

The trailing characters trick

First things first. There are different ways to implement a preheader. It can be visible in the email content, usually as small print at the top. Or it can be hidden, so that it is only readable in the inbox listing and not in the email itself.

Either way, there’s a generally unwanted thing that happens – additional text content will be pulled into the preheader by default. That could be your nav bar, or main heading, or whatever comes immediately after your preheader on the page. The result is messy.

Example of a messy preheader

Email developers, being a crafty lot, came up with a hack to stop this happening. It doesn’t really have a name, but I like to call it the trailing characters trick. It works by adding a load of blank characters after the preheader (regular spaces won’t fool it). The effect is a neatly trimmed preheader without any unwanted junk cluttering it up.

Example of a tidy preheader

And how is this achieved? Well, it’s not pretty. A string of unseen special characters is appended to the preheader, until enough rogue characters have been pushed out of view.

Code behind the trailing characters trick

That’s a non-breaking space coupled with a zero-width non-joiner… over and over again. Email is no stranger to unorthodox development techniques, but this is a contender for the most bizarre.

Except it doesn’t work any more

During recent updates, Apple has intentionally disabled the use of this trick. It still works in some places, but not in Apple Mail on either iPhones or Mac.

There is already an alternative method that works, for now. Rumour has it that this will be short-lived, and similarly blocked in the near future. And perhaps the likes of Gmail and Outlook.com will follow suit.

So, there’s a battle taking place. Why are companies going after our precious preheaders?

Functionality reclaimed

The phrase preheader wasn’t one coined by email providers. It was invented by marketers. Email app developers and webmail services have different names for this particular piece of inbox anatomy: preview, preview text, message preview.

That terminology suggests a different purpose than a secondary subject line. It’s a quick way to see some message content without having to open the email. That lets the reader determine if it’s worth their while to open, or not. A ‘preheader’, by contrast, is an artificially injected snippet of marketing blurb. Arguably this repurposing of the message preview is hijacked functionality. That is why it’s being taken back.

And it isn’t the only example of a functionality tug-of-war in email. Marketers and email devs go to lengths to suppress auto-linking (and auto-styling) of dates and addresses. Javascript doesn’t work in email, so resourceful coders have stretched the capabilities of CSS to allow some basic interactivity. There have even been celebrations of clever mosaic-style imagery as a fallback when actual images are blocked. What the marketer wants to achieve and what the email provider allows do not always tally.

Can’t we all just get along?

Email is a digital communication format that originally mimicked a letter. Its modern pumped-up visual format has pulled the medium in a different direction. Things change, of course. Particularly in the world of technology. But while progress is good, misuse is not.

Perhaps it’s time we all stopped thinking in terms of preheaders. By beginning emails with an interesting heading and useful paragraph of text, the message preview fulfils its intended purpose again – without the need for trickery. So, it’s not goodbye after all. It’s welcome back.

Email best practice

Three content lessons from Gmail’s email sender guidelines

2 minute read
Adrian Young Adrian Young

Google is tightening up the rules from early 2024. If you want your emails to land in the inbox and maintain a good sender reputation, you’d better follow them!

We recently covered the authentication aspects of their acronym-laden email sender guidelines. Within the same document are a few stipulations regarding the actual email content. But don’t worry – Google isn’t really interfering with what you put in your mailings, but instead reminding everyone about best practice that should already be followed.

Take an objective approach to your subject

Email sender guidelines: Message subjects should be accurate and not misleading.

Misrepresenting your message content is obviously bad. But so too is vagueness. Baiting customers with promises of tempting but unspecified offers may attract some curious openers. What’s the point however if those same openers walk straight back out the door when that offer turns out to be a disappointment? It’s better to make your message clear from the word go.

Inboxes are saturated with with emojis, gimmicky copywriting, and other look-at-me tricks. Perhaps the email that stands out the most will be the one that respects the reader and talks to them straight.

Have a think about your links

Email sender guidelines: Web links in the message body should be visible and easy to understand. Recipients should know what to expect when they click a link.

Linked elements in emails should be easy to spot, easy to click, and their purpose crystal-clear. Should is probably the operative word in that sentence. All too often, emails have fallen victim to link frenzy. It’s not uncommon to see confusingly multi-linked features, often to the point of being a landing page lottery.

Going wild with links may succeed in funneling more (confused) customers to your website. But if they’ve arrived on an unexpected page, they won’t be buying anything. Keep it simple and clear instead.

What are you hiding?

Email sender guidelines: Don’t use HTML and CSS to hide content in your messages. Hiding content might cause messages to be marked as spam.

Do you code emails with separate desktop and mobile images, or other such split content? That means lots of hidden elements. Apart from being a clunky pseudo-responsive development technique, it’s also a potential spam filter trigger.

Of course, there are other uses for hidden content such as ‘preheaders’ (actually a message preview) and fallback content for interactivity. But if hidden content of any kind is frowned upon and we still find the need to include it in our emails, it raises a question: are we using the medium properly?

Stricter rules… for a better inbox

As harsh as it sounds, the email marketing sent by some otherwise legitimate companies is ethically questionable and not a million miles away from being spam. Google and other companies are taking steps to combat bad email practice – and improve the medium for everyone.

Interactive email

Four useful ideas for interactive email

2 minute read
Adrian Young Adrian Young

You can do all sorts of things with the checkbox hack. But not all of them are useful. For the unfamiliar, the checkbox hack is a clever CSS trick that makes it possible to build interactive emails.

All email content must be useful to the customer, and interactive content is no exception. So, forget about those gimmicky drop-down nav menus product carousels. Let’s aim instead for the kind of interactivity that enriches our emails.

1. Rotatable products

It’s common on a retail websites to be able to view products from multiple angles. But in email there’s usually only a single, static product shot. It doesn’t need to be that way.

By assigning animation triggers to left and right arrows on either side of an image, you can let the user rotate a product right there in the email. Drop in a few frames of animation for each of the quarterly rotations and you can achieve an effective illusion of movement.

For our demo, I grabbed a mug from the kitchen. But just imagine this technique used for cars or any other product where every angle matters.

2. Colour selector

On the subject of cars – they tend to come in a variety of colours. So too do clothes, phones, items of furniture, toasters… and so on. You can guess where this is going.

Place some colour swatches next to the product image and let the user browse all colours before committing to a website visit. This isn’t just a cosmetic effect. Whilst swapping out the image, you can also swap the link, thus directing the customer straight to their chosen colour variation on your web page.

3. Multiple choice quiz

But maybe your customer isn’t so sure about what they want. Why not guide them? A multiple-choice quiz is the perfect way to present the customer with a result based on their personal interests… and you don’t even need any prior data. In fact, you can even use it to start building up a customer profile by tracking the links. How good is that?

Our demo uses a topic close to my heart: dogs. There are 18 possible combinations of answers, each leading to a specific breed of dog. This technique could of course be used for any topic under the sun. Perfect holiday destination, perfect perfume, perfect anything-you-like.

4. Randomiser

Oh, about those holiday destinations – sometimes it’s fun just to spin the globe and discover somewhere completely new. Well, you can do that in email too. Engage your customer’s curiosity with randomisation.

Here’s how it works: you can secretly cycle a series of identical-looking buttons. The random factor is time – i.e. when the user clicks the button. Dress that up in some fancy animation and you’ve created an engaging piece of content based on the element of surprise.

We’ve chosen holiday destinations for our demo, but as always you could pick any topic you like. The possibilities are endless.

What else can you think of?

Done right, interactive content can really bring an email to life. With a bit of imagination, the medium of email can be transformed into something incredible. (Just don’t forget that fallback content for non-compatible email apps!)