I have seen some mails which has HTML content embedded in them. The content of the mail changes as the corresponding webpage in their site change(for example price of stocks which keeps updating in the mail itself). How to link such webpage content into emails?
In other words how to link a web page into an email so that whenever I change the html page, the mail content also changes.
Thanks...
A thought: maybe they are using an image that is downloaded from the server?
As you can't have JavaScript in an email or even most CSS, I'm guessing this might be one of the only ways. I'm pretty sure that one email client or service removes every piece of "special" HTML: iframes, JavaScript, CSS, Flash, etc.
You could place an image in your HTML - which was updated by you on your server.
This may be impossible due to security limitations, but you may be able to use an iframe element.
Not a solution, but a quick answer from my site on this topic as a user: Beside the point that Javascript/Image/IFrame/Flash solutions doesn't reliable work in all email clients, but are a general security risk, I dislike the basic idea of changing the looks of an email after you have send it without the receivers approval. Additionally you make it very easy for the user to be tracked (working hours, locations, view) and that is definitely NOT in the interest of the users. If you have something important or interesting to tell just provide a link to your site plus a short description...
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I am a newbie and this it is the first time that I have created an html and css code.
I have written a newsletter and now I would like to send it but I do not have idea about how.
Right now the situation is as following:
I have a folder with an HTML file, a folder with the CSS file and another Folder with all the images.
Now I would like to send it, but as I said before I do not know how.
I have red that I need to make a unique file HTML and CSS (HTML with an in line CSS). Is that the only way to go?
Which program do you suggest to send the newsletter?
Where should I store the images in order to make them visible to the recipients?
Any suggestion???
Like everyone above me, I would recommend Mailchimp too.
Now why it would be ideal in your situation is 'cos:
Since you've already created a separate html and css file, merging it into inline styles is going to take considerable effort if you have a lot of content. Mailchimp has a wide variety of templates to choose from where you can just pick a template which suits you and add just the content part.
Newsletters are very tricky to code since all email clients display content in a different way unless you're really proficient at writing newsletter html files from scratch. For eg, the email client Outlook (Microsoft) will ignore margins and some other css properties. The templates from Mailchimp have been perfected to show your content exactly like your design across almost all major email clients.
If you're going to send out a big number of newsletters, your newsletters might go into spam folders based on a variety of reasons. Mailchimp has authentication so that unless you go against some obvious law, your newsletter will land in your recipient's inbox.
You can also host your images on your own server and ask Mailchimp to reference that location. I do this when I send out newsletter for my website.
Its even got free plans to help start you out and see if it works out for you.
Try Mailchimp it is faster, easier and gives more options.
There are many tools availbale which gives services for sending emails also many other features.
As your HTML mailer is ready with image folders. Try to use inline style and for the images use full path like http://company.com/image/name.jpg ofcourse you have to place this HTML file and image folder on the server as well. And then you have to copy all the HTML code and place in any marketing tool and then you ready to send emails.
Mailchimp
Pardot
Constant Contact
you can choose constant contact to sending email.they offer 30 days free trial.
MailChimp is a good bet. Their API is wide enough to get into customising the hell out of their standard templates. Watch their pricing though, it can get out of hand the larger your cliental gets!
Is there anything I need to be aware of when creating a HTML e-mail? Is it as simple as creating a valid HTML page then sending it via PHP? Or do I need to use tables to ensure it display's correctly.
Any advice to get this right first time would be much appreciated.
Creating an HTML email that displays the way you want to in email clients, can be very difficult, if not impossible. Unfortunately, email clients do not use the latest and greatest web browsers when displaying emails, and they can also restrict what should be allowed (and with good reasons).
No matter how much you might love CSS-based layouts, table-based layout is still the way to go for HTML emails. You can still use CSS for other things, of course, but in some cases it will need to be inline. The best looking HTML emails I've seen, are largely made up of tables and big images - simply because unlike on normal web pages it is nigh on impossible to create the equivalent using good web development practices. HTML email is a world of its own.
You should also test the emails in as many email clients as you can - and while it can be cumbersome to install all the different clients, you can also use services such as Litmus, MailChimp and CampaignMonitor (see also this question). Personally I have had good experiences with Litmus.
Good luck, creating HTML emails can be quite messy!
Tables are definitely the best option for HTML emails, since most other methods tend to display differently on different machines.
Things to watch out for:
Images are often blocked by email programmes - try to use background colours where possible
Don't link to an external stylesheet - put the styles in <head>. This will prevent your server being hit when the emails are opened.
There's also a good blog post from Mailchimp about using CSS in HTML emails.
Tables is bad...but the correct way to go in emails...
Also send only the part you would normally put in the body and only use inline css.
Another important thing is that background images most of the time dont work.
This is a very good guide that can help you out.
my advice: test in a lot of browsers,mailclients and email programs
You should check out Email on Acid, they not only show you what your email will look like in each client they also analyze your HTML. They highlight the HTML in you code that is not supported in the clients. This tool has saved me hours trying to figure out why an email doesn't render correctly.
One other thing that is very helpful is they provide Tips & Tricks for each client. Anyway you might want to check it out, very helpful.
I'm trying to figure out where to put some code in an email. You know how you can get newsletters with styling and images, etc? I wanted to send some out but I cant figure out where to put the code. Do you add the images as attachments? Do you put the code in the body?
or should you upload the .html file as well?
Build the page as a normal HTML page. Use TABLES (yes, TABLES) for your layout. You can use inline CSS, but you cannot use a stylesheet. All images must be fully-qualified (http://yoursite.com/images/). Don't make it wider than about 650 pixels. No JavaScript.
View your newsletter HTML in a browser
Do a select-all, and copy
Paste it into a new message and send it to yourself
See what you end up with
Try other mail clients
Various mail clients will mess with your markup and your styles. What works on Gmail will look like poop on Outlook etc. It will be an exercise in frustration. Test, test, test.
Assume all images will NOT BE SHOWN when the user originally views the email.
Here's a good guide to what works and what doesn't:
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/
My advice: keep it simple - a logo and some text and a link to the real newsletter. Making email newsletters is a fine art, and frankly, people prefer to read them in a browser where they behave like a web page.
Sending out HTML emails eigh?
There can be a lot of problems you will quickly encounter, mostly revolving around each email client having their own different way of handling things. The aim here is to keep your email as small, simple, and unbroken as possible.
The message:
Each language has it's own requirements, you need to check with the language you are using to see what is easier, to do it inline as part of the mailing script, or to have it inserted through a HTML file, etc. So for more details here, post the language you're using.
Layout:
This is where message simplicity comes in. The best layouts are usually the most simple ones, especially considering not all email clients are 100% HTML standards compliant. You won't know how big your client's viewing window for the email will be nor can you force it to any size or pop it out. Remember that it's goal is to be a message, not a webpage. Usually simple flexible/elastic tables will do the trick just fine if you have anything more advanced than simple paragraphs.
Images:
Link everything statically (statically means http:\\www. ....mypicture.png as opposed to dynamic linking which looks like this \images\mypicture.png) hosted from your server. The reason for this is so that you will have no broken links, your email will be smaller in size (as opposed to attatching). The downside is that some clients may ask about showing pictures. The cold hard truth is that this cannot be avoided no matter which method you use (See for more details).
Links:
Again, link everything statically. Local/dynamic link's won't work and your recipients will be mighty unhappy.
CSS
Either have your CSS classes at the top, or everything in-line (< ... style="..." />). You don't want to attach a CSS file, it's messy and unconventional.
Scripts
Inline or at the top of your file, for the same reason as above.
Additional Documents
If you want to include PDF's or DOCX's, etc, the best and most common methodology is just like images, to host on your server and simply include a static link in your email to them. It keeps file size down and you don't have to worry about what each and every email browser/reader is going to do.
Most of you probably know the following problem: You edit an HTML, view the result in your browser and happy with it.Then, you send it through different mail providers (AOL,YAHOO,GMAIL...), and discover that after going through their mail servers it may look
completely different (not to say worse) than you've expected it to. The view differs not only between what you see in your own browser before and after sending the HTML as an email, but between different email providers as well. A short "view source" will convince you that each email provider CHANGES (generically) the HTML.
My question:
A.I've heard there's an application allowing you to check how your html would look after going through each one of the US main email providers, so I can edit my html respectively. Can you tell me where I can find it?
B.Alternative ingenious solution? (less preferable..)
The only application I know which checks a lot of email providers is MailChimps' Inbox Inspector: http://www.mailchimp.com/features/power_features/inbox_inspector/. It sends screenshots of your email from several different inboxes. However, it's not free.
Alternatively, you can use appropriate HTML for emails, which will result in the same email in almost every inbox. Apprpriate HTML for emails are:
Use tables instead of divs
Use inline styles
Don't use background images
Do not float
Do you attach the images?
Use absolute urls?
How do you best avoid getting flagged as spam?
One of the biggest causes, that I have found, for email to be flagged as spam is DNS. Make sure the domain / MX records from which you are sending the email actually resolve correctly back from the server used for sending.
As for images, you could attach them, but the most common way is to host them and use absolute urls. Primarily this is a bandwidth issue - you have to figure you're going to get an open rate of 10 - 15%: if you have to attach all the assets to every email, 85% of the bandwidth you'll use will be wasted.
You attach the emails then reference them in your HTML like so:
<img src="cid:imagefilename.jpg" />
Outlook, at least, recognizes this as a reference to an attached image and dumps it in appropriately.
You'll want to use absolute URLs to link out to images on a server. Users won't want to download your attachments. Also most email clients will not displays images by default, so it's a good idea to keep the really important content as text.
Email clients generally all use very different rendering methods. For example, Outlook 2007 uses Word's HTML rendering engine, whereas previous versions used Internet Explorer.
Do be aware that CSS support is also very limited to in emails. Most clients, especially web mail, will strip out everything outside of the <body> tag, as well as <style> tags. This means that external or embedded CSS will not work, and that inline styles are the safest bet (the style="" attribute). There is also poor support for many CSS rules in Outlook 2007. This means that a lot people have returned to using tables for laying out email.
As it was pointed out, Campaign Monitor is an excellent resource, and I especially recommend their CSS Compatibility Chart
Campaign Monitor is a great resources for html email:
http://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/#building
Also http://www.email-standards.org/, but seems down right now.