EZ NewsLetter 2.0 HTML Email Viewable in Hotmail GMail and Yahoo

[Greg]

Working with HTML email over the past few days has enabled us to create an HTML email that will pass standards and be viewable in most all online email readers with hotmail, yahoo and GMail being the test beds.

Online Email readers are presented quite a few challenges when rendering an HTML email with embedded css and other elements that would be present in an HTML page for your browser without breaking the page. So sending HTML email is a compromise if you want all your readers to be able to receive your email and to view your email. Most, if not all, css and header data is discarded by online readers causing them to display the email wrong or not at all and sometimes reject the email completely.

Please view this HTML email created with EZ NewsLetter 2.0.0 Beta (http://www.cpurigs.com/forums/eznewsletter_thu_29_jan_2009_issue_1233255015.html ). It is the result of consultations with the owners of forums with over a million posts and close to 100K members, advice from the author of the php email class we use, and live testing on hotmail, yahoo and gmail using their webmaster guidelines.

We will no longer be using the vBulletin css to style emails. However, you will be able to choose several colors so that the email looks like your forum. That combined with the use of a good header image to represent your branding will yield eye catching quality emails based on forum data with custom messages personalized for your members.

EZ NewsLetter 2.0 will also introduce an additional email creation path that will allow you to build 100% custom emails from the open html tag to the close html tag. The forum data will be skipped. Using inline styling your imagination will be the only limit in styling within the limitations of what will render in an online email reader.

HINT: The best custom HTML emails we have seen rely on images for coloring and impact.

HINT: Setup up a test account at hotmail, yahoo and GMail to send test mails to yourself to make sure your message is coming across and rendering as you intended before sending the email to all your members.

Thanks,
Greg

[kenfuzed]

EZNL 2.0 sounds like exactly what I've been waiting for. When will this be available to those of us already using 1.x ?

[Greg]

I can post a 1.1.2 version with the new styling, send loop, and user selection, but the new send path for custom html is behind schedule about 2 or 3 days. Maybe Monday we can have that. I have not typed the first line of code. But most of it's going to be reused code, so it hopefully won't be too bad.

We no longer will use the vB CSS. Most, if not all web based email clients throw it away anyway.

We will have six elements we can set the background color and text color on. Doing this we can ensure that the emails look the same and render in every email client the same.

The custom html path will be just that, custom. It will be on you to make a proper email. EZ NewsLetter will only act as an interface to the vB user DB and the smtp email client.

You should look at...

Guide to CSS support in email clients (2008) (http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/)

To see what limitations exist. Javascript and embed tags will never work, so beware. Computer based email clients like Thunderbird and Outlook or windows mail will render things that the web based clients will not. That can cause what you think is a nice email to look very bad.

So, test test and test. If an email looks like junk, it may be flagged as such.

[Greg]

After reworking the user selection and the headers of the email based on previous testing, we did a test email last night.

While sending the tests we always monitor the mail server logs and watch the feedback from other servers and ours as the process progresses. The information is very useful, but not the answer to every question that we had.

The process is not one in which we can look at RFC docs and create a plan. We have have to look at every email service, web and computer based, as well as their individual requirements for flagging mail. It's a daunting task, hardly any of them agree or do things the same way.

Like the other emailers out there, we could have said, the send loop runs, the server says the mail went out, it works, have fun. But that is not good enough.

As I have said from the beginning, this is an exercise in getting the mail through and read. There is so much more to that then creating an email and sending it in either text or html.

Our last test included a responder so that we knew who opened the emails and where they were sent to. We had already verified by hand testing that the emails delivered were readable now and that the servers out there were at least accepting the email, but were they being delivered and read was the question.

The results of the responses have verified that the emails are being accepted and delivered that we send. The percentage of reads in the short time since we sent is very encouraging, better than expected to be honest. It's easier the be a pessimist and be surprised when things go well in this game it seems.

We have a sufficient amount of responses from email addresses at the major ISPs and free emails services to proove that they are delivering the mail now and that the emails are being read.

The currently posted EZ NewsLetter is 1.1.2 and is the version we used for this test to show that the email is getting delivered and read.

Many factors affect getting the mail through and read. Your experience may vary. We have a good reputation of not spamming, not resending bounced emails, and respecting opt out requests. We use SPF records and we throttle our email sending to a degree. Our reverse DNS record points to the correct place and we use emails within our domain always.

With little to no effort, using EZ NewsLetter and following some simple rules for sending email with proper etiquette, you can send emails that get your members attention and keep your forum active. Try it today!

[Badger]

We will no longer be using the vBulletin css to style emails. However, you will be able to choose several colors so that the email looks like your forum. That combined with the use of a good header image to represent your branding will yield eye catching quality emails based on forum data with custom messages personalized for your members.


Hi Greg ... :)

Our forum skin is custom and the beauty of v1.1.0 of EZNewsletter was its ability to have the "look and feel" of our forum coloring.

We're not CSS, HTML literate, so will this be a problem for us to maintain that "look and feel" if we go to v2.0?

Thanks

Regards,
Doug

[Greg]

I started a huge complicated answer and erased it.

With the new format, there are 6 areas that you have to give a background color and a text color to. They basically mirror the vB css settings for page, alt1, alt2, thead, tcat, and tfoot. So, using a header image for branding and setting the colors to match your forum as best as possible, you can make your email look very much like your forum. Best part is everyone will see it the same way.

You can dress up the body with images too. In line images work. Images embedded for table backgounds as such will get thrown away.

I was very disappointed to find how much differently each online web based email service rendered the html emails. the compromise is huge, but not impossible to work with.

If you need suggestions for setting up your emails, we'll be glad to help. The settings are such that once it's set up, you can forget it. But it is worth the effort we think.

[Badger]

If you need suggestions for setting up your emails, we'll be glad to help. The settings are such that once it's set up, you can forget it. But it is worth the effort we think.

Thanks t ... :)

I don't think our member's Newsletter is complicated, but help for the first on in matching the esthetics of what we've been using for v1.1.0 would be appreciated....

Regards,
Doug

[Greg]

Thanks t ... :)

I don't think our member's Newsletter is complicated, but help for the first on in matching the esthetics of what we've been using for v1.1.0 would be appreciated....

Regards,
Doug

No problem. In read me file are examples for a gray scale emails. But with a look at your forum it should be easy to match up the colors.

[woffie]

There is a special place in hell just for spammers. Enjoy!