It amazes me that so many big companies, i.e., IKEA, still struggle with email marketing creative.  It’s not rocket science, and yet, most of the promotional email I receive, particularly from retail companies, is unreadable or missing key components of the message.

System text is your email’s best friend
This IKEA example is a great one. Note that most of the popular email clients, including Outlook, Entourage, Gmail, etc., automatically remove images for ALL users. Therefore, it’s important to either remove all copy from images, or ensure that all copy is also available as system text. Many designers who are unfamiliar with the unique challenges of the medium choose to place important messages—like headlines, or sometimes, the entire body of a message—in an image to improve the look of an email.

It’s also critical to consider where in the email your content is placed, as many email clients offer only a preview-view. For instance, the only “above the fold”  system text used in the IKEA example is promoting a $9.99 pillow. Surely, IKEA wants to sell me something that costs more than $9.99! What’s more, IKEA wasted a lot of space creating a large image-based header that I can’t even see, pushing other system text messages down and out of view.

HTML optimization and ALT tags
Here is what the email is supposed to look like. Note all of the other messages hidden in images that I didn’t receive.

Luckily, IKEA included an HTML optimization link (the link at the top that reads “If you are unable to see the message below, click here to view); it took the company a while to jump on that bandwagon. Kudos are also in order for the use of ALT tag descriptions in the images. ALT tags are used on websites to help search engines identify content on your site. In email, you want to include them just in case your images are removed, like above. If a reader rolls over the stripped out image, she might see a description that reads, “$9.99 pillow from IKEA.”

The goal of ALT tags is to make the reader aware of what she is missing, which hopefully encourages her to manually download the images, or click the HTML optimization link.

Good emails—and their messages—get delivered
Remember: Good promotional email is designed to ensure the highest rate of delivery possible; it is not designed for aesthetics. What? Sacre bleu, you cry!

I know. You want your email to be pretty and a true reflection of the incredible artistry that is your website—I get it. But what difference does it make how beautiful your email is if no one can see it, or more importantly, read its messaging?