Created by Mailchimp.com this eBook takes you through what you need to know to undertake a professional email marketing campaign. You don’t have to be a professional web designer to use this guide, but a little HTML knowledge will help. First, we’ll cover all the basics, like how HTML email works (and why it always seems to break when you try to send it yourself). Then we’ll get into the technical stuff, like how to design and code your HTML email. Finally, we’ll run through email-marketing best practices for list management, deliverability and measuring performance. (PDF file, 22 pages, 4,183 KB)

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Unformated preview of the document: 'A Field Guide to Email Marketing' (Part 2):

/> on how to write your content.
• There's so much spam out there, that spam filters need their own spam
filters now. They're called firewalls, and they block email before they even
get to your recipients' spam filters, based on reputation. We'll teach you
how to protect your reputation.
• Spam laws require every email marketer to follow some very important
rules. If you break any of the rules, you can get your pants sued off. We'll
let you know what information you must include in each email you send to
your customers.
• Blacklists used to simply block email based on the server you sent from.
Now, they scan the content of your messages and look for domain names
that have been found in reported spam. Even if you've never sent an email
campaign before, you can find yourself on a blacklist if one of your reseller
partners has been sending spam with your domain name in it. We've got
tips for staying away from blacklists.
But first, what the heck is MailChimp?
MailChimp makes it easy to design and send beautiful emails, manage
your subscribers and track your campaign's performance. We take fancy
tools like segmentation, a/b testing and ROI tracking, and we turn them
into something anyone can use.
The information in this guide comes from years of research and experience
in the email-marketing world (and it doesn't hurt that we send millions of
emails a day).
4
How HTML Email Works
Before you can start designing, coding and sending HTML emails, you
need to know how it works and what tools you'll need. Here's some background
information that every email designer and marketer should know.
The Multipart/Alternative MIME format
The most important thing to know about HTML email is that you can't
just attach an HTML file and a bunch of images to a message and click
send. Most of the time, your recipients' email applications will break all
the paths to your image files by moving your images into temporary folders
on your hard drive. And you can't just paste all your code into your email
application, either. Most email apps send messages in plain-text format
by default, so the HTML won't render. Your recipients would just see all
that raw source code, instead of the pretty email that's supposed to show
up. You need to send HTML email from your server in Multipart-Alternative
MIME format. That means your mail transfer agent bundles your HTML
code, plus a plain-text version of the message, together into one email.
That way, if a recipient can't view your beautiful HTML email, the good old
plain-text version of your message is automagically displayed. It's kind of
a nerdy gobbledy-geek thing, which is why a lot of people mess it up when
they try to send HTML email themselves. You either need to program a
script to send email in multipart-alternative MIME format, or just use an
outside vendor (like MailChimp) to deliver email for you.
Image files in HTML email
Embedding images and photos into messages is the #1 reason people
want to send HTML email. The proper way to handle images in HTML
email is to host them on a web server, then pull them into your HTML
email, using absolute paths in your code. Basically, you can't send the
graphics along with your message. You host the graphics on a web server,
and then the code in your HTML email downloads them whenever the
message is opened. Incidentally, that's how open tracking works. You
place a tiny, invisible graphic into the email, and then track when it's
downloaded. This is why open tracking only works in HTML email—not
plain-text—and why the new email applications that block images by
default (to protect your privacy) can screw up your open-rate stats.
Tip: When you're coding image tags in HTML email, do this:
<img src="http://www.yourserver.com/email/images/logo.gif">
and NOT this:
<img src="images/logo.gif">
But if you use MailChimp's built-in email designer, we host your graphics
on our server for you—for free. No need to FTP files anywhere or code any
image tags.
Free hosting services
You really need your own server to host images for your HTML email.
Don't try hosting images on a free "image hosting service," because those
websites often put scripts in place to prevent you from linking to them in
emails (they can't handle all the traffic). And since you get what you pay
for in that regard, free

Unformated preview of the document: 'A Field Guide to Email Marketing':  Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19