eDM (electronic direct mailer) HTML Formatting

All Required Materials

  • HTML file - fully assembled (links and images in place)
  • E-mail addresses for testing and approvals
  • Subject line (55 characters max)

NOTE: Words in all caps, unusual punctuation, or special characters may trigger SPAM filters and may restrict delivery.

HTML File Specs

  • 580-pixel wide HTML table designed and created by advertiser
  • Maximum width can be up to 800 pixels
  • Recommended width of entire content: 800 pixels
  • Maximum allowable height of content: 2,000 pixels
  • HTML with only a single (1) image is not recommended as it will most likely be considered as spam email
  • All HTML should be table-based with no <div> tags, no floating or absolute positioning
  • NO bookmark anchor tags can be use in the HTML file as it is not compatible with Lotus Notes
  • JAVASCRIPT, Flash and iFrames are NOT allowable
  • All styles must be tagged inline, but not referencing any external style sheets, classes or Ids ad these are not compatible with Lotus Notes and Outlook
  • NO Background Images or image maps allowed as they do not work in Lotus Notes, Gmail and Outlook 2007
  • Animated Gifs are not recommended due to incompatibility with Outlook 2007
  • Images In Relative Path: compress the html file and all the images in a ZIP file (.zip)

Image Specs

  • Each image should not exceed 300k. The recommended size should be less than 100k
  • Total of all images must be less than 1024K. Under 300k is recommended
  • Images must be in .jpg, .gif or .png format and optimized for display on the Web.

URLs

  • 3rd party URLs accepted. No jump tags. Must be dedicated standalone clickthrough URLs.
  • The maximum length for a URL should not be over 255 characters.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Forms should not be used under any circumstances.

Reporting

  • Reporting will be available 7 days after the delivery date.
  • Data reported to the advertiser will include: Volume, E-mails Delivered, E-mails Bounced, E-mails Forwarded, Total Open Rate, Unique Open Rate, Click-Through Rate stats will be provided.

IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING YOUR eDM DESIGN

We should all know by now that spam filters look for spam triggering keywords. In order to try and fool these filters spammers are sending emails with a single image.

To understand this more take a moment and go look in your email junk folder. Chances are your spam filter has hundreds of image-only spam already trapped.

When you design your HTML emails, always include some text in it. Never design an "e-flyer" or just one big, large graphic. For one, images are turned off by default (see Mistake #2 above) and spam filters will think you're sending image-only spam. If you send one giant image, with not enough supporting text, you can even get blacklisted (click the screenshot to see what we mean).

Some spam filters appear to place the "image vs. text ratio" criteria even higher than the "spammy keywords" criteria. We've tested one campaign where removing all their spammy keywords actually resulted in a worse spam score, because we reduced the overall word count. Here's the study.

Tips for image-to-weight ratio:

  • Lots of small thumbnails seem to work better than lots of big graphics. Even if you have lots of text to balance things out.
  • Just can't include tons of text? If your content is just one or two lines of text, don't insert more than one or two graphics into the email.
  • We've seen emails with very little text, and one giant graphic get past spam filters. But the image was very well compressed, and the HTML code was spotless.