Garry Flemings, 2018-09-17
This repository holds examples of my email HTML work.
I write email HTML for email marketers and people who want really attractive email signature blocks.
This write-up is intended for easy scanning. Read, scan, or skip at will!
HTML? Hypertext Markup Language. (Hey, you say: Stop with the geek-speak!) Sure! HTML is the language of the Internet. (That's better?) I can do better. Let's say hypertext is regular language that includes links to other information. An example would be ... the Internet! More specifically, maybe, Wikipedia and its article on Hypertext. Yup. That blue text is a link to other information, so (surprise!) this write-up is hypertext! (Click on that link if you want to test me, but please do c'mon back!)
Markup Language? Suppose a writer wanted to inform their publisher to use certain formatting. Perhaps they'd use some symbols. Maybe a line leading with "#" must be a heading. Maybe a phrase with "_" at both ends needs to be in italics. That's a markup language! It embeds symbols (in the plain text) for effects beyond the plain text. HTML is a markup language that supports a great many effects: colors, fonts, text size, links, photos, movies, songs, ... well ... what you see on the Internet!
Markup languages may be more common than many think, by the way. I wrote this text using the markup language I briefly described in the paragraph above! I used a few more features than described. You can find where I used each if you look. It's not secret agent code!
Who needs email HTML? A business that wants to send carefully crafted messages to their contacts, having chosen the exact right message for each contact and the exact right time to send that message often uses email. They want that email to stand out in an Inbox by having an attention-grabbing subject line and by looking like a magazine page.
And people who want an appealing signature block at the end of their emails want it attractive.
We can serve the needs of both those groups with email HTML. It can be a thing of beauty!
Why specialize in Email HTML? It's weird. There. I said it. And it's hard. Read more at the heading, "Email HTML is a strange beast." I have the patience for it. My clients want to concentrate on something else entirely. There's business benefit here for both of us!
What does a writer of email HTML do for you?
- Responsive email
The best writers of email HTML write responsive HTML. These emails intentionally change appearance in response to the width of the reader's screen.
Why responsive? Email client market share reports that out of 1.03 billion emails opened during August 2018, at least 37% (so 370,000,000; that's lots!) occurred on small screens (Apple iPhone or iPad, or Google Android). Many more emails probably were on small screens, but were reported under their email provider (like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail) or other categories that could have included a mix of small and large screen sizes. A business failing to write for mobile email users could mean missing more than one contact in three. Yowch!
- Well chosen subset of HTML
We write your text in a subset of HTML that most or almost all email applications support. We keep track of features not supported and avoid them. We keep track of features supported poorly and compensate where possible. We make your email represent you well when your contacts read it. (Your email may not look the same in every email application, but it looks good in just about all of them!)
Why Garry? I took to software development like white on rice in college. I have worked in Information Technology continuously since 1992. I have consulted since 2006 and started my company in 2009. Today, my company operates as Web Impact Now and the only work it seeks is email HTML.
See more at the Web Impact Now web site.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the markup language of the web. Email HTML is exactly the same markup language. Except that it isn't.
For several decades, there have been groups of very smart people working together to improve HTML and the Web. Needless to say, in those decades, we've seen a number of versions of their specifications.
For those same decades, there have been groups of very smart developers working together to ship software products based on HTML specifications. One set of those groups worked on various web browsers. Another set of those groups worked on email applications.
Browsers, as a group, stayed far more current with successive versions of HTML than email applications. Maybe you're aware of the problems browsers have had (or have today). Those problems don't amount to much compared to problems in mail applications. For browsers much more than for email applications, developers can depend on fairly widespread support for most current HTML.
Email applications might make you think you're lucky to have the option of using any font on your computer. And any size and color.
Email text gets on your screen via the same HTML as web pages. So, you could have your email--every email--create the impact of a web page or a magazine page! It could look fantastic, but only if your email application and your reader's email application both support the HTML used.
Suppose the current version of HTML called for a phrase with "%" at both ends to be capitalized. An email sentence, "This product is %great%!" should look like "This product is GREAT!" If the email application doesn't yet support the current version of HTML, the reader would see the sentence with the two percent signs. Ick. Worse (and contrived), if the email application might support a rule that a phrase with "%" at both ends should have its letters reversed. Then, the reader would see, "This product is taerg!" Ick ick.
Let's be fair to email application developers. There are "only" tens of browsers (see [Wikipedia, List of web browsers] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers). There are hundreds of email applications. Here's a review of a "top 15". Have you heard of all these? I haven't.
Can all those email applications keep changing to consistently support the current HTML? Naaw. That's not gonna happen. It's too expensive, for one thing.
Can all those email applications support a consistent subset of HTML? (Oh, wouldn't that be wonderful! We could write email HTML only in that subset of HTML with confidence that it would look the same in every email application.) Answer to the question: It seems vanishingly unlikely. These groups seem to value freedom to operate independently much more than the extra work of negotiation and collaboration. They're already as busy as they want their email to make them.