SchoolsMailserver.co.uk

Requirements for Creating HTML emails to be sent by Us

The emails we send are HTML-Emails which allow colours, fonts, pictures, etc. 

 Donts

1.  Do not use CSS Styles in the construction of emails; use simple html tags to set fonts, colours, etc.   We find that CSS styles do not transfer reliably through mail readers and senders.  Outlook 2007 offers even less support, so we will not be changing this rule

in Dreamweaver: Edit -> Preferences
    Untick . . . 'Use CSS Styles instead of HTML tags'

2. Pictures should be linked in from a website and not embedded in the email.

3. If you wish your email to print out properly when received in school, (this is often a way mail is circulated in school) then you should contain the whole email in a 640 pixel wide box / table cell.
Marketing theory says that long lines of text are more difficult to read than columns of text, like this.

4. We do not send Attachments:   Word docs and PDF brochures, order forms, etc. can be mounted on your server (or ours; no extra charge) and then linked into the email, so readers can click, read and print if they wish.

Conversion of Word docs, PDF files, etc. to HTML-Email is a slow, painstaking task and we charge £85 +vat extra to do this conversion, except for very simple jobs.

How to make your own HTML Emails and avoid the conversion charge

1. Buy a copy of Dreamweaver (expensive) or other Web-page editor and build the page yourself.  It is as easy as typing in Word. Type text, set fonts, colours, etc. and insert pictures.

2. Get a free month, trial account on our diy-emails.co.uk website where you can create, store and test HTML emails.

   

diy-emails produces highly optimised emails for email marketing which use the minimum of resources: bandwidth, time & hence money; and produces emails which fulfill our requirements for bulk emails.        - now open at:  www.diy-emails.co.uk

 

The most effective mail is:

1. concise ... short & to the point
2. contains an image which will attract attention or impress;contains your clickable email & web addresses; from a named sender rather than just company name;
3. minimises effort needed to respond by customers; i.e. "click here and email us your name & school address"  is likely to get more response than a more complex system or a  'print, fill-in and post' form.

See example emails: Sample Emails

Avoiding Spam Filters:

Certain words and effects used in emails are likely to trigger some spam filters which some schools use. The best way to check is to send the email to yourself and see if your own filters notice it. The strongest effect on spam filters comes from mails which come from known anonymous spam-servers. If you/we send from our own email addresses, things should be OK.

Try to avoid:

1. WHOLE LINES OF CAPITALS;
2. too high a graphics to text ratio; eg. 80% graphics 20% text
3. fonts bigger than size 3; use H1 H2, etc. instead
4. words like FREE SPECIAL OFFER and RED
   

Use one of the various free Spam Test facilities available on the Internet. E.g. http://www.thecassiopeia.com/Portal/SpamTest.html

More Notes for Designers creating html emails.

1. If you are sending a graphically complex html email; bear in mind that some schools convert it into a plain-text email which will probably look a mess.
   The solution to this is to put a line at the top which says something like 'If this email does not display properly please click here' ... linked to a copy of the page on your webserver. See: samples for many examples of emails which do this.
   
2. Please supply finished creation as html source code attachment; (text).

See example emails: Sample Emails.

Paul Welbank
Deepspace Web Services Ltd.

Tel: 01603 477619
Fax: 0870 7051136