[maqr]

Am I the only one who is far less likely to read an HTML email? If I see that I need to click to allow external images for my email to load, I'm probably just going to delete it. It's amazing to me that HTML email can be effective for marketing.

If you send me a paragraph of text, I'm going to read it on my mobile. If you send me an HTML email, I'm going to archive it right away on my mobile. If you send me too many HTML emails, I'm going to eventually be motivated enough to find your 'unsubscribe' button.

[joshfraser]

I did some A/B testing on this a few years ago and found that HTML email had a better response rate for me. My methodology wasn't perfect, but I shared the results on my blog anyway: http://www.onlineaspect.com/2008/01/25/the-value-of-split-te...

[huhtenberg]

That was 4 years ago. Things change way too fast for your sampling to remain relevant for this long.

[adrianhoward]

It's been what I see in tests too. A well designed HTML mail will generally beat a plain text mail in response rates... including the one we did for $client last week ;)

[nihonjon]

troll elsewhere

[adrianhoward]

Am I the only one who is far less likely to read an HTML email? If I see that I need to click to allow external images for my email to load, I'm probably just going to delete it. It's amazing to me that HTML email can be effective for marketing.

You're not alone - but you are in a minority (well - apart from here probably ;-). Most people don't really understand that there is even a difference between HTML and plain text mails.

The difference that most people act on is a well designed vs a poorly designed email - whether that be plain text or HTML. A badly designed text mail will lose to a well designed HTML one. A well designed text mail will beat a poorly designed HTML one.

Since you have more design options for HTML you can normally make the HTML mail be the most effective option.

[duck]

I think it all depends on what type of email you're getting. I send Hacker Newsletter (http://hackernewsletter.com) out every week, and I based on past feedback and some testing, a rather large percentage of my 12k+ subscribers like the HTML version. Why? Well, I include a LOT of links in each issue (one to the article and one to the HN comment for each of the ~35 stories I include), and HTML is way easier to scan in this case.

If however you're getting an transaction type email just to update you on something, then yeah, text might be better.

[mbell]

Not all HTML emails are image heavy monstrosities. There is a lot you can do with HTML/CSS that makes the message easier to consume and more impactual without using a single image.

I feel like HTML email design lags about 5-10 years behind website design. Some of that is the limited feature set, but I think more of it is the lack of design attention its given. It seems like most of it gets generated by a marketing department using some crappy marketing campaign templating software from a decade ago with little to no thought to how the output is consumed.

[nbashaw]

I disagree with your argument that email lags behind web design due to pack of effort. Have you ever tried to code a HTML email like you would code a website and looked at the result in email clients? Do this once and you'll see what I mean.

Email clients are definitely to blame.

[mbell]

Actually I agree with this, perhaps we're just debating cause and effect. Developers in my experience do hate putting together html email due to the wonky client constraints and as a result often say to marketing "its a mess, I don't want to touch it, find a e-mail making program / service to do it".

But is that the cause or the effect?

Rather, are email clients still a mess because developers don't have much interest in topic? Even gmail has strange html/css rules, if google pulled that with chrome there would be pages of developer outrage here on HN, almost no one seems to care about gmail's html rendering, or enforcing a spec/compliance for email clients, developers are apathetic about it.

What I'm saying is, developers don't like working with html email because its a mess, but its a mess because the development community as a collective doesn't seem to care about it, at least not enough that there is a concerted effort to fix it.

[alxndr]

"almost no one seems to care about gmail's html rendering"

Addressing that specifically, a couple years ago when Gmail's HTML rendering was even worse than it is now, the Email Standards Project started this http://www.email-standards.org/blog/entry/getting-some-gmail... to try to embarrass Google into improving the rendering. It sorta worked.

[ZoFreX]

And why is it generated by the marketing department's crappy software and not the engineering department? Because no-one in the engineering department wants to program like it's 1999!

[hellweaver666]

I work for a large company, we send millions of emails a month (completely opt-in) and I can say without any shadow of a doubt, html emails get more reads and convert better than plain text emails.

[nihonjon]

I've done email marketing for some pretty big companies over the last 3-4 years, as well as a few smaller ventures. When it comes to generating revenue, HTML wins across the board in my experience with general goods' EC, daily deal, education and food.

The users of this board aren't exactly the type of people who impulse buy.

[davemel37]

I'm exactly the same way unless it's an email I am interested in or if it's from a sender I care to hear from. However, if it's an html email from a sender I care to hear from, but I open it and I have to scroll sideways just to see parts of the image... I will delete it immediately, and won't download images from that sender in the future...

Responsive emails probably won't help with emails you don't care about...But, emails you are interested in, it can make all the difference.

[tommaxwell]

I prefer HTML emails in many cases. However, most aren't responsive and for the longest time Gmail for Android hasn't supported pinch-to-zoom (I think it does in 4.2).

[justincormack]

Doesn't seem to in 4.2 either...

[sambeau]

A well designed email should be multi-part and contain a text/plain part so anyone who views their mail text-only can ignore the text/html part.

e.g. http://www.enewsletterpro.com/articles/multi_part_mime_messa...

[charlieok]

When I see an email that's just a bunch of unloaded images, I immediately weigh the benefit of loading the images (so I can see it the way the sender intended me to see it) versus the cost (loading images = telling the sender, “I just opened your email!”). The former often loses.

[city41]

Downloading images is the default on iOS devices. I suspect that has contributed to their success.