Last week we were asked to help a client with the build of an HTML email campaign. We have a lot of experience with this type of work and to say that it can often be challenging would be quite an understatement.
Building a robust HTML email template that displays reliably across today’s very wide spectrum of email software is specialist work. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. The reality is that some some popular email clients (yes, Outlook, I’m looking at you) offer very limited support in terms of HTML and CSS. And as such the code needed to render a design has very little in common with the code we’d write to build out a web project. (HTML tables… kids, ask your parents.)
There are so many gotchas and quirks to remember and be aware of, and testing is an integral part of the email design and build process. We use Litmus for testing our builds and the ability to generate screenshots from a huge range of email clients is crucial for squashing bugs and handing off work to clients.
Much of our email marketing design and development work comes as part of our collaborations with clients on their main web projects. With Lucas Fox International Properties we’ve designed and built a set of email templates for all of their customer journeys. And for Speakeasy Language School as well as designing and building customer journey templates for use within their CRM, we have also built templates for use within Mailchimp to handle their newsletter campaigns.
Last week’s project went very smoothly and we were able to meet the client’s very tight deadline. If you have a similar project in mind or if you need to take a wider look at how you can use effective email marketing to support your business and your users, feel free to contact us and let us know.