your email sucks

this is my first entry for "your email sucks" - which is really just a holding place for examples
of bad emails that i have gotten.

i do email marketing for a living, so i think i am signed up on every single mail list out there.
i don't sign up for them so that i can stalk them to find mistakes for this page, but i sign up
for email so that i can get inspiration for templates and see trends and stuff. that said, i do
see some screwed up ones.

next time you should

include a subject line

example 1
issue: simply put, they forgot to include the subject line

fix: this is obviously an easy fix, slow down, check your work and make sure you put in a subject line.

of course, i'll be honest with you, when i see stuff like this, i am more apt to open the email, so perhaps it was a test by some geeky marketing pro out there.

...but wait there's more scroll down to see the next example...

don't let sliced images

become sliced up by

gmail and other email

clients

example 2
issue: images appear "broken" within the header table

fix: this one is a bit tricky, and it is one of those that as soon as you figure out how to fix it, it becomes seconding when you're coding.

the image of the woman is sliced into three parts, and those images are set into different cells of the table - which is the correct way to code an email (oh the things we have to do as email coders!). here's where it gets tricky, the coder probably put 'padding="0"' in his/her code, and they are halfway there.

what they need to do next is add the style tag to the img code, so that it looks like this: <img style="display:block;" src="filename" width="x" height="y" border="0" /> . if this was an image that extended across the email, you can actually make it a bit more mobile friendly by leaving off the height, this will auto-collapse the email if the reader has their images turned off, ensuring that your message is fully visible.

using the style portion (text in red) makes gmail stop "slicing your images", and will make the sliced images appear as one big image, ultimately increasing readability and shortening the rendered email by a few pixels, which on mobile screens can make all the difference in the world.

this one really pains me though. i'll admit it, i like ikea - i like their design, the concept of the store/company, and the value. so when i see stuff like this, i just wan to scream at someone because its such an easy fix - if you know about the problem, meaning you need to test across different platforms and clients. once you see the issue, all you have to do is google for a solution.