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It’s no secret that overwhelmingly, the email marketing industry is a fan of HTML email. Colorful pictures, bright and eye-catching calls to action, and even embedding video or gifs or animation into emails makes for--in many cases--an easier sell. It can seem hard to compare the immersive experience that comes with the rich content email to plain text, but for many recipients, plain text is the way they get their emails--whether it’s because of data restrictions, disabilities, or a variety of other reasons, they just don’t access HTML features. Then, too, it’s worth noting that email was originally a plain text format. So while some have claimed it’s difficult if not impossible to get solid conversions with plain text, Site Impact wants to make it official: you absolutely can, and any email marketer worth their salt should be able to. And today, we’re going to give you the playbook.
Whether you’re sending out a plain text email on its own as a campaign, or just including a plain text option for accessibility purposes, the first thing you need to ensure is that your text is readable. This seems like a very obvious observation to make, but everyone has received at least one email in their lives from a brand that is utterly impossible to get through. What we mean by readable isn’t just that the words are clear or that there aren’t too many of them--making it easy to ready also means making sure you’re using white space appropriately. Split your content into chunks, and make sure you have a defined header, body, and footer to your plain text email. Space out the chunks so that people can read them in bursts, instead of being confronted with a wall of text.
With HTML emails, it’s very easy to make sure your CTA is the most eye-catching thing in your creative. A big, shiny button saying “Click here” is not a challenge at all. When it comes to plain text, however, you have to hit a careful balance of calling attention to your CTA and not coming across as annoying. A few angled brackets around the link you want people to go to can be a good idea for a highlight, or similar very basic, repeated symbols. Don’t go overboard; just a few is enough to draw the eye without looking like a lot of nonsense.
Obviously, if your only tool in the email you’re sending is words, letters, numbers, and symbols--without any contextualizing images or other frills--your copy becomes all important. For plain text emails, you have to take a very different strategy to what you would use in HTML email formats. Where you want the least text possible to communicate the idea and get to the CTA for HTML email, your copy for plain text emails needs to be much more substantial; you have to create the images in your recipient’s head instead of supplying them directly. At the same time, nobody has time to read an email that looks like it was transcribed from a 19th century love letter. Create chunks of copy that sells, and then arrange them in priority of what your recipient needs to know the most to what they need to know the least. Certainly, there will be some skimming; but with a clearly defined CTA at the end, your recipient can get the information they need up top and go straight to your link.
While it’s fun to play with all the bells and whistles that HTML email formats provide, there is an art and science to plain text email that brands and marketers can’t afford to ignore. Between providing for various accessibility needs, and even just to give a refreshing change from the barrage of inbox media, you should have solid techniques under your belt to craft plain text email marketing campaigns that convert. Contact Site Impact to hear more about how we can help you make that happen.
