Cures For the Common Code: Troubleshooting Your Email Marketing Code Issues

Stephen Sharp — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 21:49:18 +0000

Even though coding for email marketing is, in many ways, easier than that of a website, mistakes are very common. Fortunately, these mistakes are easy to troubleshoot, and most are even easier to fix.

This handy reference helps HTML coders quickly establish the cause of an error and outlines guidelines for proper email coding.

Why are HTML Errors in Emails Common?

Most issues are simply due to messy code. Very often, code gets re-used on a regular basis to deploy campaigns where the content and images are continually being updated and moved around. This can lead to unintentional duplication or omission of HTML tags, and QA oversights.

There’s also the matter of which email client (Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook 2007, etc.) you’re viewing the code. Knowledge of what works across each of the major email clients will help in determining where rendering errors are occurring and why.

Checking Code with an HTML Validator

First and foremost, use an HTML validator, like the one built into the CheetahMail application, to check your code. It reviews the code and generates a report, detailing where errors like missing HTML tags, malformed table structures and alignment issues exist in the code.

In addition, make use of QA options like Mailbox Snapshot tools which provides screenshots of what the code will look like across multiple email clients.

Across the Board:

Some coding issues tend to be universal. Here are a few of them:

Layout is off by one pixel or pushes out past the border of the design
This is usually due to one of the width measurements exceeding the total width of the table. The widths are determined by a simple math equation involving the table cells; usually the math just needs to be corrected. If you add up the individual table cells and they don’t equal the ’s width, you’ve found the problem. The problem could also be from the use of CSS to format the design. Certain email clients like Outlook 2007 and Hotmail won’t understand formatting CSS (margin:1px;) and will disregard it. The use of CSS in email is not a best practice.

Parts of a layout don’t display
This can be due to a malformed table structure, incorrect HTML syntax, or colspans that are missing or have incorrect numerical values.

The background image behind the HTML text repeats
The best practice is to design your creative so it doesn’t rely on background images. If a background image must be used, leave some extra space for the HTML text to “grow” when rendered in different email clients. Since various email clients tend to add extra line-spacing to HTML text, this will allow for the table cell holding the HTML text to expand while maintaining the integrity of the design.

HTML text isn’t aligning properly and is leaving blank areas in the creative
Make sure to use aligning properties inside the

like valign and align. Without those attributes defined, the HTML text will float in the vertical middle within the

tag. If that doesn’t work, review how the overall table is set up, and if the

measurements are correct.

HTML emails in Outlook have a mysterious “break” every 800 pixels from the top of the email down
This is caused by the rendering engine that Outlook 2007 and 2010 are built on. Since Microsoft Word inserts an automatic page break every 11 inches, or the length of a letter size document, Outlook 2007 does the same. There’s currently no way to code around this issue without changing the design to use flat colors and white space to counteract the automatic breaking.

Email Clients and Their Personalities

Once HTML code has been developed and validated, testing can begin across the major email clients on both the MAC and PC operating platforms. To know the specific coding pitfalls of the email clients is to have reached true HTML email coding enlightenment!

Here are some examples to watch out for:

Gmail/Yahoo!
Known to be very finicky, Gmail will pick up on the slightest coding mistake and render the email incorrectly. Extra line-spacing is added to HTML text which can break a design. This can be controlled with the correct usage of inline styles to control how the HTML text renders. Background images should be defined within the

tag, and NOT within the tag.

AOL
Form functionality like search fields and drop down boxes won’t work. Consider dynamically inserting forms based on domain, or linking to a hosted page offering forms.

Gmail in Firefox
Adds extra “padding” to images which causes extra white space to appear around an image’s border. You can alleviate this by adding an inline style called “style=”display:block;” to the img tag. This work-around removes the imposed padding and fixes the issue.

Hotmail in Firefox
The same issue mentioned above regarding Gmail in Firefox also happens in Hotmail in Firefox.

Microsoft Outlook 07
Most issues involving Outlook 07 have to do with it being based on the HTML rendering engine of Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word is predominantly for text formatting, so it cannot interpret sophisticated code. Basically, if Microsoft Word can’t render code correctly, chances are Outlook 07 will also have trouble with it.

Outlook 07 has no support for background images
This is a common problem for clients who use system text with a graphic behind it. Because Outlook 07 won’t display the background, it will just appear as a blank white space. As a quick fix, pick a color out of the design’s background and insert it as a hex color. Another option instead of using system text, is to code that section of the design as an image.
Animations do not work in Outlook 07
It will only display the first frame. Because of this, it is necessary that the first frame of an animation be a significant one; if the viewer is only capable of seeing the first frame, it needs to capture the basic idea of the message.

Adhering to these simple guidelines will ensure your code will be presented properly across the major email clients. Now get coding!

How The Latest Hotmail Features Will Impact Deliverability

Robert Meisel — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:06:58 +0000

Microsoft has recently announced enhancements to its Windows Live Hotmail, including features that “help busy people with full lives.” The CheetahMail deliverability team has reviewed these new features and offers these thoughts on their potential impact on senders.

Some of the new features that should have a positive impact on email deliverability include:

Trusted Senders Icon — Hotmail will now help visually identify ‘trusted senders’ in your inbox, particularly banks and other senders most commonly impersonated in phishing scams, by putting safety logos next to those senders recognized as legitimate. While the exact details on this feature are limited right now, it will most likely be based on a combination of authentication and a consistently positive mailing reputation.
Tabs — Organizational tools will appear at the top of the inbox that will allow the user to display messages received from specific contacts, certain social networks (such as Facebook notifications), pre-selected email groups, or all of their mail. In addition, “Quick Views” will be available that will automatically sort four types of emails into their respective folders: Flagged, Photos, Office Docs, and Shipping Updates. These tabs can benefit senders by addressing inbox overload issues.

One of the new features that should have a negative impact on senders and deliverability as a whole:

Time Traveling Filters — Microsoft’s filters can retroactively remove messages that were placed in the inbox if the reputation of the sender later turns out to be poor and the recipient has not yet opened the message in their inbox. That means there’s no longer a guarantee that a message delivered to the inbox will actually stay there until the recipient acts on it.

In addition to these two deliverability enhancements, there are also some new user interface features and ‘behind the scenes’ developments that can have either positive or negative effects on senders. These include:

Preference auto-learning/prompts — Subscribers that delete messages without opening them multiple times will be prompted if they want to unsubscribe from that sender (assuming the sender is populating a ‘list-unsubscribe’ setting in their transmission header). This will have positive and negative affects for senders; it will undoubtedly reduce list size by some amount, however, it removes recipients who are no longer engaged which should improve open and conversion rates.
Sweep — This feature allows users to clean out their inbox in one ‘sweep’ effort. In a single-click, a user can select a single e-mail sender, or multiple senders, and automatically delete or move every message from that sender out of their inbox. A positive byproduct of this feature is that senders whose mail is swept should not suffer any impact to their reputation since the number of unsubscribes and spam complaints should decrease as more recipients use sweep rather than unsubscribing, deleting or complaining. However, it’s important to remember that just because a complaint rate is low doesn’t mean that the sender’s reputation and deliverability is good. Hotmail will still check email quality, engagement and other relevant statistics to further identify legitimate messaging. Additionally, the sweep function remembers user preferences, so if a user sweeps a sender’s mail once, Hotmail is likely to continue to sweep that sender’s mail to the designated folder until the user intervenes.
Delete all of them? — Upon deleting a single email from a sender, users may be prompted to “Delete all of them?” with the ability to block all future messages from that particular sender. This action should have the same positive/negative effects as the Preference auto-learning/prompts.

These enhancements to Hotmail can have both positive and negative effects on senders. These changes are primarily designed so that fewer true spam messages will appear in your subscriber’s inbox, which will allow the subscriber greater time to interact with legitimate messages from legitimate senders.

Marketing Forward » hotmail

Cures For the Common Code: Troubleshooting Your Email Marketing Code Issues

How The Latest Hotmail Features Will Impact Deliverability