[WebPub] best practice for html email announcements

[Wilcox, Curtis]

On 11/4/10 4:00 PM, "Barbara L Malec" <bmalec at mit.edu> wrote:

> Hi Julie,
> 
> Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?
> 
> http://www.mailchimp.com/kb/article/how-spam-filters-think/

That's a link I quickly found to after googling (one of the top hits goes to
another mailchimp page that links there).

http://www.google.com/search?q=html+email+best+practices

A lot of the hits are about good coding practices for HTML within email but
writing good HTML is one of the ways of reducing the chances of being
blocked.

I'm not an experienced bulk sender but here are some thoughts that I've
gleaned over the years.

I think it helps to send multipart messages with the content both in HTML
and plain text helps (and it's good for those who avoid HTML in email). I
think it also helps to use a well-established, "known" SMTP server rather
than sending them directly from your FileMaker server.

Be consistent with URLs, inconsistency can be interpreted as deception.
Visible link text should match the href attribute, hosted images and links
should be in the same domain, if not the same specific server and preferably
be the same domain used for the From address. Never reference servers by
their ip address, always use the server hostname (the canonical name rather
than an alias may help even more).

If you're sending HTML formatted email from FileMaker, I think that means
you're using a 3rd party plugin. The plugin developer may have some general
advice (or a forum for customers who share advice). I'm sure such a plugin
is used by many for the same purpose.

 
> On Nov 4, 2010, at 12:13 PM, Julie Ellen Pryor jpryor at MIT.EDU wrote:
> 
>> Hi all -
>> 
>> We occasionally send out html-based email announcements to large groups of
>> people via our filemaker database. I have since learned that some of these
>> people are not receiving our email announcements because their email programs
>> are interpreting our announcements as spam. Our emails are fairly basic in
>> nature but they do typically include an image. I have no way of knowing how
>> many people are receiving our emails or not (although I think most are
>> getting them) but I'm wondering if there is anything we should be doing to
>> *decrease* the chances of our emails being tossed into the dreaded spam
>> folder... 
>> 
>> What is best practice for html-based email announcements? SHould we avoid the
>> use of images, for example?
>> 
>> Thanks for any insight you can provide!

-- 
Curtis Wilcox
Information and Adaptive Technology Manager
Adaptive Technology Lab
Instructional Media Services, FAS
ccwilcox at fas.harvard.edu
617-496-1647