EDM (Electronic Direct Mail)
We want to make sure your email sends as smoothly as possible and delivers you genuine value. In order to do that for every email you will need to provide us with a:
- Short subject line (10 to 14 words max)
- HTML version of the email
- Text version of the email
- List of email addresses to which you would like tests to be sent to
All creative must be received 5 Business days prior to the email send date to allow for testing and publisher approval.
Send creative material to web_production-au@idg.com
Subject Line
The subject line is the most important element of your email. The strength of your subject will determine whether readers will decide whether or not to open your email. If the rest of the email is brilliant and the subject is not, you will substantially reduce your email’s performance.
- The ideal email subject line should be around 50 characters or less
- Smartphone email clients will often only show the first five or six words of the subject line so it should start with something meaningful.
- Take care to not use words which are likely to be caught in spam filters
HTML Version
Your email needs to display effectively on a huge range of email clients, all with their own quirks and requirements. Follow the guidelines below to ensure that readers can read your clients and devices.
We will not accept HTML emails that do not adhere to our guidelines and common best practices of HTML email design
- Supply the HTML email in .html format
- The .html file cannot exceed 50kB
- Layout of the email must be done entirely with tables. Do not use any external CSS. Inline CSS is recommended.
- Do not use
<colspan>
and<rowspan>
attributes in tables. - Remote host all images that should be displayed in the email. Do not include images using relative paths e.g.
<img src="images/pic.jpg">
- Keep the width of the email under 600px
- Do not use Javascript, animated GIFs, Flash or iframes
- Do not create HTML files from within Microsoft Word or other programs not designed to generate email-ready HTML files.
- Provide alt properties for any images in your email. We recommend that you only use images to show nonessential parts of the messaging, many email clients will block those by default. Those email clients will displaythe alt property instead.
- Do not use
margin
CSS properties. They are not supported in Outlook email clients. Usepadding
instead. - Use inline CSS as follows to specify fonts:
<span style="font-size: 10px">lorem ipsum</span>
rather than font tags. -
To prevent unwanted whitespace around images:
- Do not wrap images in block-level tags such as
<p>
- Ensure all images have inline style display: block
- Any images should be contained within a table cell(
<td>
) without any additional whitespace:
Good Bad <td><img></td>
<td>
<img>
</td>
- Do not wrap images in block-level tags such as
- If using element attribute
valign="top"
ensure its use is consistent across a table row - We recommend using Litmus to test and ensure your HTML email looks great in all major email clients
- Additional recommended reading material:
HTML Examples | ||
---|---|---|
<img src="images/pic.jpg">
|
No | Do not include images using relative paths |
<img src="http://www.yourdomain.com/pic.jpg">
|
Yes | All images should be externally hosted |
<td valign="top" style="margin-bottom: 10px;">
|
No | Do not use margin css properties |
<td valign="top" style="padding-bottom: 10px;">
|
Yes | Use padding instead of margin |
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://www.example.com/style.css"/>
|
No | Do not use external CSS |
<p style="color: red">hello></p>
|
Yes | Inline CSS is recommended |
<table><tr><td colspan="2">long column </td></tr></table>
|
No | Do not use rowspan and colspan |
<span style=”font-size: 10px;”>lorem ipsum</span>
|
Yes | Specify font information this way |
<img src="http://example.com/image.gif" alt="server picture" width="100" height="100" />
|
Yes | Provide alt tags for all images. Specify width and height |
<span><b>Nest tags properly</span></b>
|
No | Tags not nested correctly |
<span><b>Nest tags properly<b></span>
|
Yes | Tags nested correctly |
<img src="http://example.com/image.gif" style="float: right" />
|
No | Do not use the float CSS attribute |
<img src="http://example.com/image.gif" style="position: fixed" />
|
No | Do not use the position CSS attribute |
Plain Text Version
This version will sometimes be shown by some email clients instead of the HTML version
- This version of the creative is a simple text version of the email. It will have no images and should be supplied as a txt file attachment
- Keep all lines under 72 characters
- No formatting such as italics or bolding can be used
- This file should be encoded in standard 7-bit ASCII
- The first 25 words or so will be used to generate the preview of the email in some email clients(ie on iPhone).