When and How To Use Plain Text Emails

By Pam Neely May 6, 2022

Really don’t forget plain text e-mail. Occasionally, they can outperform fancier HTML e-mails.

Simple textual content email messages are a minimalist marketer’s finest close friend. And whilst they are at times viewed as “old university,” textual content-based mostly e-mail are nonetheless go through and despatched all the time. You’ve possibly been sending some on your own.

So if paring your e-mail messages down to their most straightforward variety, or generating your email messages readable on equipment like Apple watches seems exciting, maintain looking at. This posting will include:

What is a basic textual content electronic mail?

A plain textual content e-mail is what it appears like: It’s an email concept that only features textual content. There are no images or graphics and no formatting. All the one-way links are created out.

Here’s an illustration of a simple textual content electronic mail:

And here’s the HTML variation of that similar email:

The difference involving plain textual content and HTML e-mails

As you can see in the examples over, simple text e-mail seem like… simple text. HTML e-mails glimpse a lot more like a web site web site, total with an picture, a colored history, and embedded back links – all the visual features most marketers want to have in their e-mail. 

It’s possible most entrepreneurs, but not all of them. A person survey of email entrepreneurs showed that only 20% of marketers want to send out only HTML emails. 62% prefer to ship a hybrid HTML/basic text e mail, and 16% actually choose to send only text-centered e-mail. 

This is reliable with email advertising finest procedures. It’s also pretty quick to do. Pretty much all electronic mail marketing companies allow people send out two versions of their emails – text and HTML. And several e mail services will instantly build a textual content model of each individual e-mail. 

When two variations of an e mail are despatched (employing “​​multi-aspect MIME format,” if you want to get geeky), every subscriber’s e-mail consumer will show either the HTML or the simple text edition, relying on the settings in the subscriber’s electronic mail customer. 

For the email senders who expressly want to mail only text e-mail, numerous electronic mail company suppliers permit them to established up their e mail campaign so it only goes out as basic textual content.

This is why you’re probably sending basic textual content e-mail previously – due to the fact your electronic mail service provider immediately helps make a text version of just about every electronic mail you mail. 

When to use a text-based mostly e mail as a substitute of an HTML e mail

So why do some email marketing and advertising solutions quickly build textual content-only e-mail? Is there ever a superior rationale to ship only a textual content-based mostly electronic mail?

All those are all wonderful concerns. 

Basic text e-mails continue to have their location. Here are five reasons to use them:

• Plain textual content emails have a more compact file sizing than HTML emails, so they load speedier

Text-only e-mail are excellent if your subscribers come about to have a slow internet connection. So… say you’re sending e-mails to hikers in the backcountry or to individuals in other distant areas. If you sent them a text-only information, they’d be more possible to be capable to read it with no having to wait a lengthy time for it to load. 

• Text-only e-mails can be browse on far more units.

Plain text emails can be read through by “internet of things” type of equipment like Apple Watches, or even by applications that can read people’s e-mail to them whilst they are driving. 

This also usually means they are superior for accessibility. For these that depend on textual content-to-speech audience, these e-mail are much easier to be read aloud for people with vision impairments.

• Basic textual content e-mail can have a a lot more particular come to feel.

At times copywriters, coaches, or consultants will send out textual content-only e-mails since they want their e-mails to appear more private. And a simple textual content information does search much more like a information you’d get from a mate. 

How effectively this tactic will operate will rely on your viewers and your copywriting expertise. Once all the pretty photographs and design are long gone, all that’s left is your duplicate.

• Text-only email messages can be a great format for transactional email messages

One other instance where by you could see a text electronic mail now is if you have positioned an buy on line. Not all ecommerce sites ship text-only transactional e-mail, but quite a few do. 

You will not be ready to include things like products photos or social media icon back links if you use a simple textual content e mail, but if you are just obtaining begun with your company, sending a basic-textual content e-mail is a very good ample get started. 

• Some ecommerce consultants say that “ugly” (aka simple) emails transform greater than “pretty” (HTML) e-mails

Why? They say due to the fact hideous email messages stand out in the inbox greater. There are also stories that unpleasant email messages perform much better for fundraising as well.

The jury’s out on this – but you might want to test the theory. Create a split-take a look at of a several unappealing e-mail and examination them against your prettier HTML e-mail. Let us know what you come across out!

Do text e-mail improve e-mail deliverability?

No. But a few many years in the past, there was some dialogue on the internet about no matter whether or not simple text e-mails improved email deliverability. Eventually, it was not correct. 

AWeber email deliverability specialist Chris Wong indicates that any fret about HTML as opposed to basic text e-mail shipping is misplaced. He suggests,

The far better thoughts to request are the pursuing:

1 – Who are your subscribers (are they Gmail, Yahoo, etc, users, or are they B2B end users)?

2 – Has the user subscribed to be mailed and offered their consent to be mailed, and are they anticipating your messages?

3 – Are the messages remaining sent partaking to the user or are they currently being disregarded, or even worse, end users are complaining about them?  Frequently glimpse at your engagement price trends.

There are several alerts involved that contribute to whether or not messages go to the Inbox.  Dependent on who you are mailing and the Mailbox Service provider they reside with, that will dictate the place your emphasis must be.  Important Mailbox Suppliers will seriously weigh consumer engagement, the two optimistic and detrimental.  The assessment from all those will have a potent impact on wherever the messages go.   

Be cautious of what’s in your messages as properly.  Just after paying out consideration to your engagement charges and bounce rates, then check out if any url domains are blocklisted, or if there are individual terms or phrases that may be contributing to spam detection.  This will entail testing your concept, hoping diverse variants, as nicely as performing split-testing, which can be handy to check subject matter traces and message written content, giving insight into what performs ideal.   

So established that e mail marketing myth aside. There are superior factors to mail simple text email messages, but e mail deliverability is not one particular of them. 

How to make textual content-only e-mails seem superior

Basic textual content e-mails can be “dressed up” a bit a lot more than just basic textual content. This is in particular essential for scannability and calls to action.

As you almost certainly know, most individuals really don’t go through all the copy on a webpage (you aren’t the only 1 who skims!). We cannot prevent this habits, so we have to adapt to it. Even pro copywriters will make their copy uncomplicated to scan. 

To make your e-mail simpler to scan, attempt:

• A person-line or very shorter paragraphs
• Bullet points 
• Straightforward characters to emphasize textual content
• Putting your get in touch with to motion on a line by itself
• Making use of a postscript to emphasize the crucial concept of your e mail
• Often employing all caps (make sure you use sparingly)

This textual content e-mail from email copywriting grasp Ben Settle employs lots of of people very best practices, such as a single-line paragraphs, the call to motion on its individual line, and a couple terms in all caps.

Clean up auto-generated plain text emails 

So you in all probability have now been sending plain text email messages, mainly because most email marketing and advertising providers send out each textual content and HTML versions of every email.

But have you at any time checked how your basic text e-mail look?

In some cases automobile-produced textual content e-mails get a very little garbled, so it’s not a terrible strategy to do a quick place verify of your emails before they go out. You will in all probability only have to increase a handful of line breaks, but it will make your e-mails less complicated to go through. This is in particular legitimate if you are inclined to mail HTML emails in a two or a few-column structure.

Here’s how to do this inside of an AWeber account. This is the view of the concept editor. It demonstrates the HTML edition of an electronic mail message. To edit the plain text variation, just click on the basic textual content icon in the reduced remaining-hand corner of the display.

Just after you click that, you will see the textual content edition of your e-mail. 

Even now, basic text e-mails have their place

So that’s the 411 on plain textual content e-mail. They are entitled to far more awareness than they get. Depending on your audience and your e-mail advertising goals, they might perform really effectively for you. And if you have any outcomes to share about simple textual content emails that outperformed HTML e-mails, we’d enjoy to hear about them in the feedback.