e-shot - what, how, help!

fRostiE

fRostiE

fRostiE

Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
6,212
Location
UK
Hey,

I've been asked to produce an e-shot for various reasons ;)

I've never made one before... my understanding is images and HTML which is sent via email, am i right?

does anyone have any material or tutorial information regarding how to 'make your first e-shot'?

Am i best just coding a 600x600 image rich HTML page?... i receive plenty of them, I've just no idea how to go about making one!
 
You can include the images in the email, but it's better to upload them to some webspace and link the email to them. This will make the email much smaller.

The thing to remember when coding emails is to throw every good HTML and CSS practise out of the window.

You HAVE to use tables for layout. It's best to use inline CSS on your elements - don't link to an external stylesheet.

Here's a PDF which lists what CSS elements work in each different mail client.

We tend to create emails at about 560px wide as this is usually the minimum size of the viewport in email clients.

Also, if you want to see how your email looks without having to install all the different clients, http://litmusapp.com/ is very good.
 
One other thing you should rememeber with e-shots is that sending out thousands of emails from anywhere looks very suspicious from an ISP's point of view and will probably get your host black listed.

If its a huge quantity then it would be best to design it yourself and send it off to a company with a list and let them deal with it.
 
thanks,

i've just snatched a Monster.co.uk mailshot for a job advert - which gives you an idea why i've been asked to create a mailshot in the first place... currently picking it to bits and it's hugely tables orientated - not the way i would usually code a webpage at all!

Thanks for the information :-)
 
Thats because most email clients are about a billion years behind everything else.

They all do their own weird and wonderful interpretation. Hotmail, Google, Outlook all love to interpret the same code in different ways, and replace my code with their own mumbo jumbo. All you can do is test and test.

Good luck.
 
I find the worst to code for is Outlook 2007 as for some reason Microsoft, in their infinte wisdom, decided that it should use the Word HTML engine :confused:

It is a nightmare.
 
grab a look at dot mailer provides loads of information about how successful your mailer was also includes a html desginer
 
What is the best method to send these things?

I've got the page badly written in tables and whatnot, works in Firefox and IE.

Using IE i do File > Send > Page by email... - is this correct? should i be doing it another way?

When i do that to my work address (Outlook 2003) - it works fine.
When i send it to my gmail account - it works fine.
When i send it to a hotmail address - there is a tiny gap between some of the images (2-3px)

When i forward the email from my gmail to my work address... some images do not appear as they were in the origional email.

When i go to forward the email from my work address to my gmail - in the preview window - the images have already gone funny (same as above)

unfortunately due to proxy at work i cant upload screenshots :(

Is this just par for the course with these things? I'm not sure how best to send the the e-shot to the people who've asked me to produce it, for fear that it wont appear correctly in their email client

:(
 
In outlook I use insert, file, and then select your html file and in the bottom right the insert button has a drop down arrow, use "insert as text". NB. I only use text based e-shots now as we had enough of images and over complicating everything.

Forwarding such emails after the initial send is always dodgy as different mail systems attach the files and some do not, and then they try to rebuild your message with another set of client rules. It's really a quagmire of disaster.

Best to send properly for the checks and not forward.
 
fRostiE said:
[...] I've got the page badly written in tables and whatnot, works in Firefox and IE. [...]
Click to expand...
A no-frills tip for testing HTML e-mails, from somebody that's designed/built plenty:

Open your HTML file using Word. It's a more accurate representation of how Outlook 2007 will render it than any web browser [which are much more forgiving].
 
I mentioned Litmus earlier - http://litmusapp.com/pricing

The free account lets you do 50 tests a month which will be more than enough for this email.

*ninja*
Although I just realised the free version only lets you test in Gmail and Outlook 2003, which is kind of pointless. Still - it's a great tool.
 
do you think it would be acceptable to link a prospective employer to a webpage which had the HTML Table and images linked in rather than actually emailing them the e-shot?

Failing that i guess i just have to risk it and hope it renders reasonably on their machine?!!
 
That would depend upon how knowledgeable about HTML mail delivery your prospective employer is.

If they understand that all clients react differently, and some render less optimally than others, they may take a more tolerant attitude to receiving a less-than-perfectly rendered email.

The vast majority of people, however, will see a 'broken' email and think that you've cocked it up.

Personally, I'd take that risk out of the equation and do whatever you can to display your work in its best light - so link to an 'online' version.

If they know about email design/build, they can always look at the underlying code, aye.
 
Last edited:
If you are going to link, dont have just the link in an email.

Write a nice text based mail that won't change and then link through to a whizz bang version webpage. That's what we moved to doing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom