Update Your Organization's Image with Slick HTML Newsletters

Plain text may be a fine way to send a newsletter, but if you want your message to get noticed, not sent to the virtual trash can, HTML can help you upgrade your organization's image. Instead of just boring black-and-white text, an HTML newsletter includes text with different kinds of formatting (bold, colored text, different fonts, and other treatments), pictures, background colors, and columns.

I had first-hand experience in creating a newsletter during my work with the California Community Technology Policy Group ( CCTPG), a group that works to assure under-served communities reap the economic, educational, health, and civic benefits computers, the Internet, and new digital innovations have to offer. Like many organizations, we've been sending out e-mail news in plain text, but because we are a coalition focused on technology, we wanted our e-mail newsletters to look professional. We didn't want to do mass marketing or major online advocacy, like sending 10,000 faxes to elected officials. We just wanted upgrade our image a bit with the roughly 250 organizations with which we regularly communicate. Many of the messages we send are action alerts, so we do not want them to get overlooked.

Many organizations (including TechSoup in its "By the Cup" newsletter) avoid HTML e-mail for a number of reasons, but the more I researched HTML newsletters, the more I realized that this is a complicated issue. In my investigation, I found that if an organization wants to send HTML e-mail, it will need to think about technical issues, consider the way different e-mail programs deal with HTML, how to build an effective newsletter, and the ins and outs of spam and spam filters.

Pros and Cons of Sending HTML Newsletter

HTML, or hypertext markup language, is a language the controls the way Web pages appear. In effect, your e-mail program works like a Web browser to interpret HTML code in plain text and present it on your screen as nicely formatted pages. So when you receive a nicely formatted message, that message is actually a plain text message that your e-mail client is interpreting. When there are images involved, usually the pictures are stored on a Web server and called up when the message is opened.

On the one hand, HTML e-mail looks much better than text and often appears more professional. It can even have the same look and feel as your Web site or paper newsletter. The downside is that creating fancy, formatted e-mails takes more time and effort than a simple text version would. And your newsletter may not look the same to everybody who receives it. In fact, for a small percentage of people using e-mail clients that cannot read HTML, your newsletter may not be readable at all. One 2003 survey by nwsltr.com, a site that covers newsletters, found that while more than 90 percent of Internet users can actually read HTML e-mails, 45 percent of them still prefer to receive plain text.

There is no right or wrong answer as to whether to send or not send an HTML newsletter. This is an ongoing debate, even in the TechSoup Community . If you do decide to send your newsletters in HTML, read on for some ways to help you do it effectively and efficiently.

Creating an Effective HTML Newsletter

Before you create an HTML newsletter, consider your audience’s technical capabilities. Some e-mail purists believe that the only way to insure 100-percent readability is to use text only. TechSoup.org is one of those purists and decided three years ago that plain text would be the most accessible format for its newsletter because it ensured that even the least tech-savvy members of its audience could read it. This is an especially important issue for people with visual disabilities who depend on screen readers or Window's visual accessibility tools.

The first thing you need to do when creating your newsletter is to test the way it looks with a variety of e-mail applications and services. Send the message to e-mail accounts of people who use Outlook, AOL, Hotmail, and others to make sure your newsletter looks right. Or better yet, keep some of the more commonly used e-mail programs installed on a computer in your office to double check the readability of your HTML e-mail. While you cannot check all of the possibilities, I recommend at least testing in Outlook, AOL, Yahoo Mail or HotMail, and the Macintosh Mail client.

A Plain-Text Version of Your HTML Newsletter

When you create an HTML newsletter, you're also creating a plain text version as well, but it's highly likely that version won't be formatted the way you want. (To get a sense for this, save a Web page from your browser as a text file and look at that file.) On the upside, even if your e-mail program does not understand HTML, it can still read an HTML message.

Images in HTML e-mail generally aren't included with your message, but are located on a Web server (which could be your organization’s Web server) and called up when the recipient opens the message. While there is a way to embed the image with your message like an attachment, different programs interpret this inconsistently and you should avoid using this method. So I recommend you call up images from a Web site.

Users must be online to see the images, which could be an issue if many of your users download e-mail and read them off-line. Your readers can still view the text formatted correctly, they just won't see the images. Either way, be sure the images are smaller than 100 kilobytes in size, so they'll load quickly.

One important note is that the most recent versions of e-mail programs, including Outlook 2003, Google's Gmail, and AOL versions 6.0 and higher, will not load images in HTML e-mails by default so be sure and use the ALT HTML tag with all image references. (An ALT tag substitutes text in the spot where an image should be; it's mainly used when the image is not being displayed.)

Three Options for Creating HTML Newsletters

Now that we've got all of the technical details out of the way, the question now becomes, how do I create these HTML newsletters?

There are three basic options:

1. Use your current e-mail client.
2. Use a bulk e-mail client specifically designed for HTML.
3. Use an application service provider (ASP).

For the first two options, you'll need to dish up images on a Web server, and some basic HTML knowledge will come in handy. For the ASP option, the ASP will host the images for you, making HTML knowledge less important. For information on finding an ASP, TechSoup's FAQ can help.

Using Your Current E-mail Client

If your list doesn't have many subscribers and your newsletter is a simple layout, your current e-mail client's editor may do the trick. With this option, you simply send the message like you would any other e-mail, but be sure paste addresses into the BCC: field to protect everyone's privacy.

Some gotchas: Outlook and Eudora allow you to use bold, italic, indenting, and different fonts, but they won't let you use advanced HTML features, like background colors or tables, which let you create columns and boxes. Inserting images into this type of layout can be problematic and should be avoided.

If your e-mail client isn't robust enough to do what you want, another option is to create the newsletter HTML file using software such as Macromedia's Dreamweaver (which you can acquire at a discount from TechSoup Stock ).

This type of software will allow you to use images, tables, and background colors. Once you create your HTML file, you can insert that file in to an e-mail message. As mentioned above, the images must be on a Web server, and the HTML file must refer to the absolute location of those images. For example, to insert the TechSoup logo in to your newsletter, you must point to: http://www.techsoup.org/images/TSlogo.gif using HTML code.

If you're an Outlook user, be warned that the program offers the option of sending e-mail using plain text, HTML, or something called “Microsoft Outlook RTF Format.” Be sure you have your Outlook options set to send in HTML format. If you have it set to Microsoft Outlook RTF Format, your message will look great for Outlook users but not for anybody else.

Use a Bulk E-mail Client Specifically Designed for HTML

Many bulk e-mail clients can assist you in sending nicely formatted HTML newsletters and can make the process of creating HTML newsletters easier, either by using their own editors or by allowing you to insert files created in DreamWeaver or other HTML editing programs. Many programs have templates and additional services, like the ability to maintain your mailing list or pull e-mail addresses from a separate database or spreadsheet.

To personalize each message, customize them with the person’s individual name and e-mail address in the header and in the body of the message, too. (For instance, the message can say “Dear Fred,” or whatever salutation you'd like.) One final benefit, as mentioned above, is that each e-mail will actually contain an HTML and a plain-text version. HTML editing programs usually let you edit the text version separately from the HTML version, so you have total control over both versions.

I reviewed several of these programs, and found three to be functional and relatively straightforward. They all cost less than $100 (scroll to the end of this story for a list of these applicationsand other resources).

Full-Service Newsletters with ASP

If you'd rather leave the tough stuff to someone else, use an application service provider (ASP) to create and manage your e-mail newsletter. With an ASP, you can take advantage of many great features, such as customizing messages, tracking how many people read the newsletter, how many people clicked links in the newsletter, and letting recipients add or remove themselves from your e-mail list, all without any action by you.

An ASP is the best option for an organization that wants to reach hundreds or thousands of people, and wants to actively collect data regarding how many people are reading or clicking through each newsletter. Below are just some of the options, although there are many others. Costs for these services vary depending on how many addresses are on your list, and how often you use them. But generally, it runs anywhere from $15 to $100 per month.

But those pretty HTML e-mail with images sent out by ASPs can be a problem because they're more likely to get marked as spam by various spam filters, either on your recipients computer, or by their ISP. Yahoo Mail and Hotmail have spam filtering features that many people may not understand how to use properly. And many organizations now block spam before it reaches their employees’ computers.

So in addition to thinking about readability issues, you need to consider whether or not your readers will receive your message at all. Keep in mind that the visually impaired will have challenges reading your e-mail, unless you follow common HTML accessibility standards, such as the W3C Guidelines.

After weighing the options, the CCTPG decided to use an ASP, that is, until I received a message the ASP sent that was marked as spam. Because we only needed to send messages to 250 organizations, we will likely use a bulk e-mail client.

When you're making your own decision, you'll need to weigh the issues laid out above. Think about the technical expertise of your staff, the amount of staff time and money you want to commit the project, and how important the look of the newsletter is to you and your audience.