Michel,

if you don't mind, can you tell me what ARP stands for when you say:

Thanks!

@Subtle:

More words in an email means more chances of specific words tripping the spam-filters.

@Tom:

AutoresponsePlus (self-hosted autoresponder/list manangement).

AutoResponse Plus: Profit Building Autoresponder and Mailing List Software

My "long" html emails get read. It's largely a function of the list.
I have lists where a low open rate is 49% to a high of 82%.

One of my clients with a multi-million dollar company does
exclusively long copy emails.

What I don't understand is why all the IM experts use text.

It brands them as a no-body.

I'm switching all my emails to graphics based HTML courtesy
of Sasha at Welcome to HIDEFCOVERS.COM | Cutting edge eCovers made for you.

Peace.

Good point re html emails. I am in the process of doing more of them, though they're more time consuming, they are definitely more professional.

My mantra is, "do what successful people do". And since Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Jeffrey Gitomer and others I follow ALL exclusively use html, and they make hundreds of millions in sales, there's got to be a reason for it.

Deliverability may be lower w/html (though I haven't confirmed this, and we need to test it), but I'm sure conversions and credibility are both much higher with html intensive emails.

The best approach may be to use a combination of both formats, eg alternate them, with html for most, but text at other times, for quick emails. eg 70% of emails in html format, but occasional news flashes or bulletins in text. Though my preference is all-html. Time to test.


Ken

Precisely. HTML email ALWAYS outperforms plain text. Cosmetics play a major part, and formatting and all the tricks that help to convey your message with more impact will always be better.

Plain text was simply a way to "tease" the user to an actual HTML page (which is what you want). A recent report on email deliverability has concluded that HTML emails are still having a hard time getting through.

The worse of the bunch? The big mailers, like Gmail, Yahoo, and MSN/Live/Hotmail. Apparently, Gmail seems to be the "best of the worst." The article talked about a research team which found that Gmail will filter many HTMLs as spam, but have a lesser degree of false positives. (They also "turn off" html and give readers the option, which, assumingly, means they check the content more than they do the formatting, for spam.)

Yahoo is a little worse, but they still filter spam into junk folders. Hotmail is apparently the worst of the bunch, because they not only filter HTML as spam but also "filter them out" (many HTML get completely deleted, lost into the ether, never reaching any folder or inbox).

But admittedly, it's a lot better than 2-3 years ago, where most HTML emails were instantly flagged.

Some Stats:

The campaign I mentioned early that was looooong copy to a cold list (un-endorsed) was HTML and had an open rate of 15% and sales rate of 12% for a $59 product on a 30 day free trial. So, it wasn't just lead gen.

Don't know if that sucks or not - but it gives some stats to play off.

If we had used a very short teaser email leading to the HTML page - would the open rate have been better? I would guess, "Yes" - but with this client didn't have time to test it.

Another client sends out "cold" HTML emails and has a 10.7% hard open rate, a 5% click through rate and a 50% sign-up rate on webinars and white papers.

I have no basis to know if that "sucks" or not. Combined with their sales team follow-up on the leads it's worth $250,000 - $350,000 a month in sales.

I'm running some test this month I think will increase the sales rate another 25% +.

I'd love to see comparative numbers if anyone has them.

You can't really check open rates with plain text. Only clickthroughs.

But that said, there are several things to note: you can test dual sends. That is, where you send an email that has both HTML and plain text versions. You can also segment your database and send plain text only to the big mailers (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, and aol). And you can also check delivery of your messages (plain text or not) using tracking services. For instance, aweber has one:

Delivery Monitor - Email Deliverability Tracking

Thanks Michel.

Great points as always, Michel. And re split-testing w/text emails for testing deliverability, that's easy, by simply setting up A/B landing pages that have <base href> tags at top, so you can send them to different subdirectories in the site if needed, as in

mysite dot com / privateoffer
vs
mysite dot com / specialbonus

And see which pulls best..


I think it comes down to, with all the stimulus overload and feeling of people being time-limited and pressured, the more graphical and visual media, like video and html emails, will continue to work more effectively because people don't want to "work" to read... and want to be entertained visually instead.... a la youtube is popular, but text-heavy sites are not, unless they're well organized like wikipedia.

so from a copy standpoint, the "large bold stuff" is better, when segmented and easily seen, vs very long multi-hundred word sites... and emails...

hmm so that tells me, I need to change my format to be more html heavy, with a combination of catchy visuals for the skimmers, and supporting bite size paras/callouts, for the readers.. more to test...

-k

I used delivery monitor with a major mailer I worked with.

I recommend it but the results were scary.

One day, virtually no mail would go to AOL.

The next day, Bell South would shut everything down.

Today, I recommend only using one of the big guys to deliver mail.

I can't recommend ARP at all. I'm sorry I started with them.