Plain Text Emails: Why They Are A Crucial Part of Every Email Campaign
Plain text emails are just that — plain text. No images, no pretty fonts, no hyperlinks. While they may not be nearly as attractive as HTML-based emails, they play a significant role in a well-rounded email marketing strategy.
In this post, we’ll give plain text emails the attention they deserve — focusing on why they’re important, how to properly build them, and we’ll provide plenty of examples along the way.
Why use plain text?
Even when you’re sending out an HTML email, a plain text alternative is crucial.
Multi-part MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) bundles together a simplified plain text version of your email along with the HTML version of your email. Unless you’re sending out a solely plain text email, multi-part MIME should be part of every email campaign.
Some great reasons why sending in multi-part MIME is a necessity:
- Spam filters like to see a plain text alternative. HTML-only emails are a red flag for spam filters. A lazy spammer wouldn’t take time to create a plain text alternative so make sure you do!
- Some email clients and apps can’t handle HTML. While it’s not as common as it used to be, some email clients do not support or display HTML properly. In instances like this, the plain text email will render instead.
- Some people simply prefer it. Since a variety of email clients give their users the option to only receive the plain text version of an email, it’s important to send in multi-part MIME format. Otherwise, if your subscribers have enabled this setting and you only send an HTML version, they may not receive your email at all.
What do your subscribers see when you don’t include a text alternative?
If your HTML-only happens to make it to your subscribers’ inbox and they are unable to view HTML emails (either by preference or their email client’s capabilities), what will they see? While some email apps, like AirMail, will show the HTML version, others will not. For example, older BlackBerry devices show the plain text version of an email, but, if no plain text version exists, the HTML will be shown instead. The email below wasn’t sent in multi-part MIME format and, as a result, the raw code rendered in this BlackBerry client:
Clearly, this is not an ideal experience for your subscriber! When researching examples for this post, we were surprised by the number of senders not using multi-part MIME — including a handful of leaders in the email space, who should (arguably) know better. Between deliverability and accessibility issues, sending in that format should be a no brainer!
We also found that a number of companies are technically sending in multi-part MIME, but the text version is completely blank. For example, check out this email:
While this may look less abrasive than HTML code rendering, subscribers may be confused by receiving an empty email.
Understanding that it’s bad to ignore text versions of emails is one thing. But providing useful, well-designed plain text emails is another.
Fortunately, by following some of our tips below, you can optimize your plain text emails for your subscribers.
Here’s how to optimize your plain text emails
Most Email Service Providers (ESPs) will send in multi-part MIME automatically, or walk you through setting this up as an option. However, these auto-generated plain text versions are usually unorganized and difficult to read. For example, the text version of this email is filled with back-to-back links (which would be difficult for a mobile reader to tap!), there are no clear calls-to-action (CTAs), and it is overall a poor email experience for any subscriber receiving it.
While using these auto-generated versions can save you time, be sure to edit them if need be. There may be added spaces between paragraphs, corrupted characters (ASCII characters such as trademark, copyright, and smart quotes, etc. aren’t supported), and links and text that are unnecessary.
Regardless of whether you’re creating the plain text version yourself, or using the auto-generated version from your ESP, it’s important to make sure the email is easily scannable and actionable. Without HTML design elements like background colors, larger text for headlines, imagery, and the like, you must use other elements to achieve readability.
Easy scanability + content hierarchy
Regardless of whether you’re designing for HTML or plain text, providing your subscriber with a positive email experience is key. Part of this is organizing content so it is easily scannable (because, let’s be honest — no one is reading every word of your email). Headlines also serve as a clear indicator of which pieces of content you’d like to be the primary focus, versus secondary, tertiary, and the like. There are numerous tactics to help achieve this.
Clear headers
While you can’t use larger text or different colors to separate headlines from the content, there are a few strategies that do work, like using all caps or symbols to separate sections. For example, the headlines in this example are clear and stand out:
With the double asterisk (**) next to each headline and a row of dashes underneath, the headers are clear, which makes the email easy to scan. We use similar tactics to make our headlines pop:
If you don’t have defined headlines in your plain text email (or your HTML!), your subscribers won’t have a clear reading (aka skimming) path. For example, if I opened up the email below, I would have no idea where to look first — it looks like a blend of links and text!
Whitespace
Another important element for scanability is whitespace — which involves including line breaks between different content sections, headlines, and CTAs. It creates a clear eye path for the subscriber, as well as allows links to be easily clickable (and touch friendly on mobile devices). This plain text email has virtually no whitespace — making it difficult to read and follow any of the CTA.
On the other end of the spectrum, this example uses whitespace appropriately. The use of spaces between paragraphs, links, and even equal signs (=) creates hierarchy.
Bulleted lists
Using lists is another great tactic for creating hierarchy in a plain text email. While bullet points aren’t supported, you can use other characters, like -, *, or + instead. For example, this plain text email uses dashes to list out special features included in a particular deal:
By using dashes, the hierarchy of the email remains intact — despite the lack of fancy HTML elements — and the reader’s eye is drawn to that aspect of the email.
Defined CTAs
Regardless of whether you’re sending an HTML or plain text email, your CTAs should always stand out — your subscriber shouldn’t have to go looking for them! For example, in this email, all of the links and CTAs are similar and nothing stands out.
While it’s a bit more difficult to make CTAs stand out without the help of colorful HTML-based buttons, there are other tactics you can use in plain text emails. This example uses two angle brackets (>>) to draw attention to to the CTA:
Between the angle brackets and the “Shop Now” text being on one line and the link on the next, the CTA stands out in the email (and it’s easy to tap for mobile subscribers).
Let your lines run free!
In the past, many email clients allowed text to run extremely long before wrapping it on a new line. As a result, it was a best practice to add line breaks every 60 characters in your plain text emails to increase legibility. However, times are changing — with more modern email clients (especially an influx of mobile clients) text is typically prevented from running too long or is resized to fit in the window. Nowadays, using line breaks can make your email look awkward and raggedy:
As a result, we are siding with our friends over at Campaign Monitor — let your lines run free! Don’t waste time using line breaks.
Don’t overdo it with links
If you open up an HTML-based email and it’s full of CTA buttons, you’d be overwhelmed. Similarly, if you open up a plain text email and it’s full of links, you get the same reaction.
Holy links! Not only are they not labeled, but there are so many of them. Also, all of the links are wrapped in order to track clicks. While I’m an advocate for link tracking, hidden URLs can look spammy — they are difficult to read and the destination of the link is not clear at first glance.
While there is no set-in-stone rule for this, we prefer the minimalistic link approach for our plain text emails and actually opt to lose the click tracking.
While we aren’t able to see our click data, we prefer to keep our links simple and allow our subscribers to clearly see the URL they’ll be visiting. To us, providing our subscribers with a better email experience is worth losing the click data — it’s a compromise we’re willing to take.
Another alternative is to include Google UTM parameters on your links — this is the middle ground between wrapping your links and not using any tracking mechanism. Future Insights uses this technique in their emails:
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This post originally appeared on the Litmus Blog.
