I subscribe to many charity emails and we, charity people, are all very good at designing beautiful emails; as are Waitrose and John Lewis. In the past five to eight years most of us have mastered the art of good headers and footers with added personalisation; as have Argos and Amazon.
A few weeks ago, I had a meeting with a charity not too big in terms of income and resources but ambitious and eager to develop their online fundraising activity. They asked me how many email templates they should use. My reply: zero. I advised them to go back to text only. I truly believe donors won’t be upset if the email they receive doesn’t have a template. Of course if you are receiving an email from a large charity like CRUK or Oxfam, you'd expect a fully branded email. But from a small charity? Maybe not. First of all, all email programmes nowadays remove images. I rarely bother downloading pictures contained in emails. There goes your opening rate and another unreliable Key Performance Indicator (KPI) to sort out. I bet many charity supporters are like me. But also, do you really think there are people naive enough to believe you're sending this email just to them? They and I know that Cecilia, in the donors/events/marketing team, didn’t write “Dear Bertie,” at the start of the email she sent me. Having said that, it’s still better than the “Dear #PositiveTargetFirstNameField,” which I received a few weeks ago…
I'd love to receive an email like this:
Hi,
This year we have more Marathon runners than ever in the [insert your charity] team.
I hope you're training is going well. If you haven’t done it yet, you should join our Facebook group (insert link). You may find training partners.If you need help email me!
Thanks,
Cecilia
Events teamPS. Dont forget fundraising is part of the training programme!
A simple email, which take 5 minutes to write. It doesn’t need a web team to design it. Perhaps it should have been
checked by another member of the team to avoid the small typo but that makes it more human.
I’d be interested to hear from a charity willing to experiment with that and report back on successes or
otherwise—I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong.
by Ben on 3rd March 2010
Report comment
Bertie, you are in good company, I think it was Albert Einstein who said “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler”.
I agree with Mr Einstein, I don’t think the effectiveness of the mail above is diminished by the simplicity. It’s simple, clean and I bet it has a very low bounce rate!
by Alex B on 5th March 2010
Report comment
Ah finally! Couldn’t agree more. I got a fabulous email from the Tate membership team this week. No images, no fancy banner just a great email that almost felt like it was only sent to me…and it made me want to scroll down and read the email I had previously ignored!
My colleague Elli emailed you a few weeks ago and I wanted to check you’d seen her message – see below.
I hope you take the opportunity to rejoin – it’d be great to have you back at Tate very soon.
Very best
Jess
Tate Members
by Ewan on 5th March 2010
Report comment
It’d be interesting to know how many people, when given the choice between plain text and HTML emails at signup stage, choose the plain text. I know I always choose HTML because, I admit, I quite enjoy perusing the lastminute.com email newsletter… but then I just get frustrated when something more functional comes in and I have to wait for the graphics to load on my iPhone. Furthermore, I found myself agreeing entirely with you here.
I guess it’s a case of suitability for purpose. A rich HTML email can give the impression “This is a visual publication for you to read at your leisure” – and if the content doesn’t live up to that promise, it’s a frustrating experience.
by Ben on 11th March 2010
Report comment
Ewan, that’s is an interesting point – should we be using HTML and plain text in different ways?
Perhaps a broadcast email such as general marketing or “visual publication for you to read at your leisure” should use HTML, but if we are looking for a response from the user to do one thing, maybe plain text is the way to go?
by Jason Suttie on 23rd March 2010
Report comment
Definately agree that different types of emails should be built differently. For an email which is about providing engaging content images and layout are necessary. If you’re wanting to talk to the person about a transaction or relationship building then why clutter up the email?
Although I’d say it’s more layout issue than purely HTML v txt. HTML allows more control over layout(and branding), even if you don’t use images, to present the information in the clearest way for the recipient.