Promotional email specs (e-blasts)

Please provide us with:

• Artwork made using the guidelines below
• Subject heading
• Sender name (e.g. Company name)
• Date and time of send
• Email addresses of people who should receive the test message

Supplying the HTML message:

We use Campaign Monitor to send our 3rd party mailing. Please check the following guide on creating a successful email before sending us your artwork:

https://www.campaignmonitor.com/dev-resources/guides/coding-html-emails/

www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/will-it-work/guidelines/

Email formatting guide:

Outlook, especially the desktop versions, has been notorious for its lack of full support for modern HTML and CSS. This can cause emails or other HTML content to render differently in Outlook compared to other email clients or web browsers. Let’s discuss some common issues with Outlook rendering and how they might relate to the provided HTML content:

1. CSS Support:
   • Outlook for PC, especially older versions, relies on Microsoft Word’s rendering engine to display HTML emails. This leads to many CSS properties not being rendered correctly or simply being ignored. Inline CSS styles are usually better supported than embedded or external stylesheets.
2. Background Images:
   • Outlook doesn’t handle background images well. If there are background images, they might not be displayed correctly.
3. Responsive Design:
   • Responsive designs using modern techniques like media queries are often not supported in Outlook.
4. Web Fonts:
   • Custom fonts might not be supported or may render unpredictably. It’s better to use web-safe fonts when designing for Outlook.
5. HTML Structure:
   • The use of the div element is widespread in modern web design. However, tables (<table>) are usually more reliable for layout in emails due to better support in email clients like Outlook.
6. SVG Images:
   • The provided code contains SVG content (the play button overlay for the video). SVGs might not render or be supported in some versions of Outlook.
7. External Content:
   • If there’s content that’s fetched from external sources (like images), there might be issues if those sources aren’t accessible or if they’re blocked by the recipient’s email settings.
8. Width and Dimensions:
   • Setting widths and using max-width can be tricky in Outlook. The provided content has multiple width attributes set, and if they aren’t supported correctly, it could lead to layout issues.

To better understand and troubleshoot why the content doesn’t render correctly in Outlook:

1. Testing: Use tools like Litmus or Email on Acid. These tools allow you to see how your email looks across various email clients and versions, including many versions of Outlook.
2. Simplify: Try breaking down the content to identify which parts cause issues. Start with a simple version and add elements one by one to see where it breaks.
3. Fallbacks: It’s often a good idea to provide fallbacks. For example, if you’re using a feature that’s not supported in Outlook, you can provide an alternative style or content just for Outlook using conditional comments.

In conclusion, while the provided content may look fine on modern browsers and email clients, Outlook, due to its peculiarities, might not render it as expected. It’s always a good practice to test and optimize email content specifically for Outlook if a significant portion of the audience uses it.

Tips

• Do not use absolute positioning; place your content within no more than 600 pixels wide. This width includes borders. No heights are needed within the table tags.
• Please Centre-align your HTML content.
• Keep image file sizes optimised and include “alt” tags on each image.
• All images must be called directly from your own server and referenced by the complete URL or supplied in a zipped image folder.
• Define the height and width of all images (for faster load times).
• Please try to keep the ratio of image and text equal or preferably more text than image. This will help with getting through spam filters.
• Use the target=”_blank” attribute, so that people who read e-mail with webmail services do not have the requested page appear within their webmail interface.
• Please do not use background images in tables as these do not display well in Outlook which 11% of our users read their e-mails by. If you must use background images, please refer to this article and test thoroughly as BIBA Publishing will be unable to correct if it fails during testing.
• Microsoft Word is not suitable for formatting HTML to BIBA Publishing’s requirements.
• Do not use image maps within your HTML code if you have a responsive design.
• No JavaScript
• gifs are accepted.
• No attachments can be dispatched.

Materials should be sent to your advertising contact five working days prior to the desired delivery date to we have time to test.