So What Is An HTML Email?
HTML emails have everything that standard text emails lack. These emails look similar to stripped back mini websites, from images to colour, font styles, formatting, and even certain multimedia.
The only difference is that they’re delivered to email inboxes instead of viewed online.
With the majority of email newsletters and corporate announcements sent out today utilising HTML, it’s safe so that they’re not going anywhere soon.
Can I See An Example?
Sure thing, click here to take a look at our Ecologi “Rooted In Success” CSR newsletter.
How Can HTML Emails Help My Business?
Higher Engagement
From pie charts to looping GIFs, HTML emails can help you get your message across quickly and more effectively. This is especially true for those in your audience that feel more comfortable with image-based instructions, over lengthy bodies of copy.
After all, an image paints a thousand words, which is vital when you can captivate or lose your audience in the first paragraph of an email.
Your Branding Message
Adding rich media to your campaign not only helps reinforce your brand guidelines, but enables you to present your products or services in a visually impactful manner. Does your company have a new product launching soon or an existing service that has been improved? If so, then images, videos or animations are a far better choice to champion those offerings compared to relying on the written word.
Audience Tracking
Although your common or garden HTML email doesn’t have this functionality, if you’re integrating your campaign into a CRM such as HubSpot or Salesforce, a world of analytics is at your disposal.
This not only helps you discover how well your campaign performed but also prevents similar mistakes in future endeavours, should your audience engagement be poor.
What About Accessibility?
Just because your email is full of GIFs, images or diagrams doesn’t mean it’s always going to engage with your entire demographic. Designing the perfect email campaign also involves thinking about accessibility.
Offering a plain text version is vital in catering for people using screen readers and helps avoid anyone feeling they’ve been forgotten.
Less Is More
It’s worth mentioning that just because you can add rich media content to an HTML email, doesn’t mean you should. By all means, add images to support your content and GIFs to help explain a complex process, but research suggests that emails, where multimedia was overused, meant a decrease in the open rate of around 37%. That’s a huge hit to take simply because you found an exciting animated graphic.
Don’t Forget A Call To Action
One of the most important, yet often overlooked benefits of HTML emails is the ability to make your call to actions more prominent with buttons, eye-catching formatting and more.
If it sounds like an HTML email is something that will help get your healthcare message across effectively, we’re pretty sure you know where to click.
