When and How To Use Plain Text Emails

By Pam Neely May 6, 2022

Don’t ignore basic text emails. Occasionally, they can outperform fancier HTML email messages.

Basic textual content e-mails are a minimalist marketer’s very best pal. And whilst they are sometimes viewed as “old university,” textual content-primarily based e-mail are however examine and despatched all the time. You’ve almost certainly been sending some you.

So if paring your e mail messages down to their most straightforward type, or generating your e-mails readable on gadgets like Apple watches sounds appealing, maintain studying. This posting will address:

What is a basic textual content email?

A basic textual content e mail is what it seems like: It is an e-mail message that only consists of textual content. There are no images or graphics and no formatting. All the backlinks are prepared out.

Here’s an example of a basic text email:

And here’s the HTML version of that identical e mail:

The big difference between simple text and HTML e-mail

As you can see in the illustrations previously mentioned, simple text email messages glimpse like… simple textual content. HTML e-mails glimpse much more like a web page webpage, full with an graphic, a colored track record, and embedded hyperlinks – all the visual aspects most entrepreneurs want to have in their email messages. 

Perhaps most entrepreneurs, but not all of them. 1 survey of email entrepreneurs showed that only 20% of marketers choose to send only HTML email messages. 62% want to send a hybrid HTML/plain text e-mail, and 16% basically like to send out only textual content-primarily based e-mails. 

This is consistent with e-mail marketing and advertising very best practices. It is also relatively uncomplicated to do. Just about all e mail marketing and advertising solutions let people today ship two versions of their email messages – text and HTML. And quite a few email solutions will mechanically create a text version of just about every e mail. 

When two variations of an e mail are sent (using “​​multi-aspect MIME structure,” if you want to get geeky), each subscriber’s e mail shopper will exhibit possibly the HTML or the plain textual content variation, depending on the settings in the subscriber’s email customer. 

For the e-mail senders who expressly want to deliver only textual content emails, lots of e mail support suppliers allow them to set up their e mail marketing campaign so it only goes out as simple text.

This is why you are probably sending plain text email messages already – due to the fact your e mail company provider immediately would make a textual content model of just about every email you send out. 

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

So why do some electronic mail marketing and advertising companies immediately create textual content-only e-mails? Is there at any time a great explanation to ship only a textual content-dependent e-mail?

These are all excellent issues. 

Basic text emails even now have their location. Below are 5 good reasons to use them:

• Basic text e-mails have a lesser file measurement than HTML e-mails, so they load more rapidly

Textual content-only emails are terrific if your subscribers come about to have a sluggish web link. So… say you are sending e-mails to hikers in the backcountry or to people in other remote places. If you sent them a textual content-only information, they’d be much more possible to be ready to go through it with out having to hold out a lengthy time for it to load. 

• Text-only e-mail can be go through on more gadgets.

Simple textual content emails can be read through by “internet of things” form of products like Apple Watches, or even by applications that can browse people’s emails to them though they are driving. 

This also indicates they’re greater for accessibility. For all those that depend on textual content-to-speech visitors, these emails are much easier to be study aloud for all those with vision impairments.

• Basic text email messages can have a extra personal truly feel.

In some cases copywriters, coaches, or consultants will send out text-only e-mails mainly because they want their e-mail to seem additional own. And a plain textual content message does glance much more like a information you’d get from a friend. 

How well this tactic will operate will depend on your viewers and your copywriting techniques. The moment all the rather photographs and structure are long gone, all that’s remaining is your duplicate.

• Text-only e-mails can be a very good format for transactional e-mails

One particular other instance the place you may see a textual content electronic mail now is if you’ve put an get on line. Not all ecommerce websites deliver text-only transactional emails, but a lot of do. 

You will not be able to incorporate item photographs or social media icon backlinks if you use a plain textual content email, but if you’re just having started out with your business, sending a plain-textual content e-mail is a excellent enough get started. 

• Some ecommerce consultants say that “ugly” (aka simple) e-mail change far better than “pretty” (HTML) email messages

Why? They say simply because hideous e-mail stand out in the inbox superior. There are also studies that hideous e-mails operate better for fundraising as perfectly.

The jury’s out on this – but you may possibly want to take a look at the concept. Develop a split-take a look at of a handful of unattractive email messages and examination them against your prettier HTML e-mails. Allow us know what you uncover out!

Do textual content e-mails enhance electronic mail deliverability?

No. But a several decades back, there was some dialogue on the web about whether or not simple text email messages enhanced e mail deliverability. Finally, it was not correct. 

AWeber e mail deliverability expert Chris Wong implies that any be concerned about HTML as opposed to basic text e-mail shipping and delivery is misplaced. He suggests,

The better issues to inquire are the next:

1 – Who are your subscribers (are they Gmail, Yahoo, and so on, customers, or are they B2B users)?

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

3 – Are the messages becoming despatched participating to the person or are they being ignored, or even worse, end users are complaining about them?  On a regular basis glimpse at your engagement amount traits.

There are various indicators associated that add to whether messages go to the Inbox.  Dependent on who you are mailing and the Mailbox Supplier they reside with, that will dictate wherever your aim should be.  Main Mailbox Providers will heavily weigh person engagement, both equally constructive and damaging.  The assessment from individuals will have a solid influence on wherever the messages go.   

Be wary of what is in your messages as nicely.  Following having to pay focus to your engagement premiums and bounce rates, then check if any backlink domains are blocklisted, or if there are unique phrases or phrases that could be contributing to spam detection.  This will entail screening your concept, making an attempt unique variations, as nicely as performing break up-testing, which can be handy to take a look at matter traces and message content, providing perception into what performs best.   

So established that electronic mail advertising and marketing myth aside. There are very good factors to deliver plain text email messages, but e mail deliverability isn’t 1 of them. 

How to make text-only e-mail look better

Plain textual content email messages can be “dressed up” a bit much more than just basic textual content. This is especially essential for scannability and calls to motion.

As you almost certainly know, most folks don’t read through all the duplicate on a webpage (you aren’t the only one particular who skims!). We can’t end this behavior, so we have to adapt to it. Even professional copywriters will make their duplicate simple to scan. 

To make your emails much easier to scan, try:

• A person-line or quite short paragraphs
• Bullet points 
• Very simple figures to emphasize text
• Putting your connect with to motion on a line by by itself
• Making use of a postscript to spotlight the essential message of your electronic mail
• Often using all caps (be sure to use sparingly)

This text email from electronic mail copywriting master Ben Settle employs several of those best methods, together with one particular-line paragraphs, the contact to motion on its possess line, and a couple of phrases in all caps.

Clean up automobile-produced basic text emails 

So you most likely have currently been sending simple textual content e-mails, for the reason that most e-mail promoting services ship both of those textual content and HTML variations of each individual e mail.

But have you ever checked how your basic text e-mail glance?

Often automobile-produced textual content e-mails get a small garbled, so it’s not a terrible strategy to do a brief location verify of your email messages before they go out. You will most likely only have to insert a several line breaks, but it will make your email messages less difficult to examine. This is specifically legitimate if you are likely to deliver HTML e-mails in a two or a few-column structure.

Here’s how to do this within an AWeber account. This is the look at of the concept editor. It exhibits the HTML model of an e-mail information. To edit the basic text version, just click on the plain textual content icon in the decrease remaining-hand corner of the screen.

Following you simply click that, you are going to see the textual content version of your electronic mail. 

Even now, plain textual content email messages have their position

So which is the 411 on plain text e-mails. They ought to have much more attention than they get. Depending on your audience and your electronic mail internet marketing objectives, they might operate seriously well for you. And if you have any results to share about plain text emails that outperformed HTML email messages, we’d enjoy to listen to about them in the remarks.