Advanced template frequently asked questions

   1. Design questions
   2. Requirements
   3. After the design
   4. Glossary
   5. Contact us

Design questions

Question     How will you know what I want my template to look like?

Answer     

After your Email Marketing Consultant has discussed your needs with you, you will be sent a Design Brief document. This asks several key questions about different aspects of your new template, to help us design an email that meets your expectations.
    
      
Question     Do I have to complete a design brief?

Answer     

Ideally, yes. Without one, we have very little idea of what you’d like the end design to be like. Most people find the brief only takes 15 to 20 minutes to complete.
    
      
Question     Can my email look exactly like my (print) mock-up?

Answer     

Probably not exactly. When we design the template, we have to work within the confines of the different email clients that may be used by your recipients. If there are areas that differ to your mock-up, this is generally for compatibility or accessibility reasons. It's also worth bearing in mind that, unlike print, emails can look different from one email client to another. See also text sizes, below.
    
      
Question     Can I send you brand guidelines and/or corporate colours to incorporate in my design?

Answer     

Yes – indeed, we recommend you do. Our professional designers are more likely to create something that fits all your criteria if they have guidelines like this to follow. We think they’re so important, in fact, that we’d be reluctant to start a design without them. They can be sent over to us with the rest of your design brief.
    
      
Question     When I send you artwork to work from, which format is best?

Answer     

When sending logos and other artwork, the best formats are Adobe Photoshop files, Adobe Illustrator files or EPS files. We do accept JPGs, although they are generally trickier to work with – especially if we need to resize them, as the quality degrades.
    
      
Question     Can I have drop shadows within my template?

Answer     

Yes, although this can make updating the template a little tricker. It can help if you have some image manipulation skills, but if you don't, we can add drop shadows by fixing the size of the image - this means, however, that if you wish to re-use the template, you need to use images of the same size.
    
      
Question     Can I have a particular size of font in my email?

Answer     

Pretty much – although emails use a different system of font sizes to that which you may be used to. Unlike Microsoft Word and other word processors – which commonly label their font sizes as anything from 8pt to 72pt – HTML emails only allow seven sizes. This may mean that there isn’t one that exactly meets the font size used on your website or other promotional material. Additionally, some email clients may render (or ‘display’) font sizes slightly differently. As a rough guide, a font size of 12pt in a letter is size 2 in an email – Here are some examples of font sizes you can use.
    
      
Question     Can I use any font I like?

Answer     

Just like font sizes, email clients only support a certain number of fonts. This means that if you wish to use your own corporate font, you’ll probably find that this is not one of the supported ones. In these cases, we put all the text you want to be in a ‘special’ font into an image. However, this can cause problems in email clients that either do not show images at all (like mobile devices), or those that may not show them by default. For this reason, we like to limit the amount of text in images. Having text as images can also dramatically increase the size of your emails, which can mean they take longer to download.
    
      
Question     Will you be using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in my email? I thought they were the future!

Answer     

They are – for websites. When designing emails, we try not to use styles unless we really have to. Why? Because many email clients either don’t support CSS at all, or just certain parts of it. This means that if we design an email that is reliant on CSS, the chances are it won’t show correctly for all your recipients.
    
      
Question     What are background images, and can I use them?

Answer     

Background images are images that can have text overlaid on top. For example, you may have the top banner set as a background image so you are able to type the month and issue number of your newsletter over the top. However, more and more email clients may not display them at all, leaving the area blank, or showing ‘alt’ text. This means we try and limit the use of background images where possible. Where we do use background images, we try and make sure the background colour is suitable to the design. Using this technique, we can build emails with background images that ‘degrade’ effectively.
    
      
Question     Can I just send one big image?

Answer     

Yes, but we wouldn’t recommend if for compatibility, accessibility or usability reasons. If you are eager to have a particularly graphical email, we would ‘slice’ this up to create many smaller images which email clients prefer.
    
      
Question     Can I have a main background colour?

Answer     

Yes - we contain the colour within a table, which means that replies and forwards continue to work.
    
      
Question     Can I add links to images?

Answer     

Absolutely, this is easily achieved through the dotMailer editor.
    
      
Question     Do I really need Alt tags?

Answer     

We’d recommend that you do, for a number of reasons. See Alt tags in the glossary for more information.
    
      
Question     Can I change a link from the default blue colour to anything else?

Answer     

Yes - this is simply done by highlighting the link and inserting a text colour.
    
      
Question     I have lots of information to go onto my email. Is this bad?

Answer     

We’d normally recommend you limit the content of an email, for a number of reasons. Perhaps most importantly, some email clients, such as Microsoft Outlook 2007, can cut off the top, bottom, or even just display the middle of very long templates, as they cannot handle those longer than 3000 pixels. Additionally, people generally have fairly short attention spans! A long email can put readers off, thus harming the effectiveness of your send. It can be much better to reserve some of your content for future editions of your email.
    
      
Question     Can the template be of any shape or size?

Answer     

Best practice dictates some rules for the size of emails. We normally design them to be a maximum of 660 pixels wide, as this means they'll show correctly in most email clients. Anything wider than this can mean the recipient will need to scroll horizontally - something many users get frustrated with. Likewise, we recommend that the main content of an email starts fairly near the top - otherwise, you risk the recipient not scrolling down, and missing your message.
    
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Requirements

Question     Do I need an unsubscribe link?

Answer     

Yes, if you are sending to UK and EU recipients.
    
      
Question     Do I need the ‘read in browser’ link, and does it really have to be at the top of the email?

Answer     

We recommend you do, mostly for those recipients that receive your email on a mobile device, such as a Blackberry. These often only support text emails, but are able to render web pages correctly. Having the link at the top means that these users don’t have to scroll through many lines of HTML to reach the link. As the link is unobtrusive, those recipients that are using an email client that supports HTML will probably not notice it.
    
      
Question     Do I have to include my Company Number?

Answer     

Yes, if you are sending to UK recipients. This is a legal requirement, as is including your company address/registered office details.
    
      
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After the design

Question     What text can I edit?

Answer     

Anything that isn’t an image, for which you'll need an image editor.
    
      
Question     Will I be able to update the images?

Answer     

Yes, if you have the ability to create them. See ‘drop shadows’.
    
      
Question     How flexible will my template be?

Answer     

We always create templates to be as flexible as possible, but it will depend to a certain extent on your knowledge of HTML.
    
      
Question     Where will my template be uploaded to?

Answer     

Your template library – accessed through your dotMailer account, it can be seen in the main navigation on the left-hand-side.
    
      
Question     Can I include a recipient’s name, or other personalisation info?

Answer     

Yes - the information just needs to be included in your address book.
    
      
Question     How do I make sure I don’t overwrite my new template?

Answer     

Always load the template from your library, and save as a new campaign.
    
      
Question     Can I have a form embedded into my email?

Answer     

No, as a form has to run an external activation page which cannot be controlled. The best way to get round this issue is to have a link on your email to a page that contains a form.
    
      
Question     Can you create a form for me? And host it?

Answer     

Yes – we’d be more than happy to create a custom form for you, and even host it so you don’t need to get your IT department involved. Have a word with your dotMailer Email Marketing Consultant for more information.
    
      
Question     Can I add my own personal actions to personalise the email?

Answer     

No not within our actions menu, however you can add personalized HTML email listings within your address book. Here you can add a column and within your template, pick up that information and display it within your email.
    
      
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Glossary

Question     Alt text

Answer     

This is an abreviation of ‘alternative text’. This can be applied to images, so in the cases where images cannot be shown, the alternative text is display instead. This is important in terms of accessibility, as computer users with little or no vision rely on this alternative text to understand what would have been represented by the image.
    
      
Question     CSS

Answer     

Standing for ‘Cascading Style Sheets’, CSS allows the design and layout of a website to be separated from the content. While this is great for websites, not all email clients support it, which means we use normal HTML to control the design and layout of templates.
    
      
Question     Email client

Answer     

An email client is a program or service that displays email. This can be an application – such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express or Lotus Notes, or a website – such as Hotmail, Google Mail, or Yahoo. These are just a few of the clients that exist. When we create a sliced template, we test each one in all the available email clients to ensure compatibility.
    
      
Question     HTML

Answer     

This stands for HyperText Markup Language, and is the language that both websites and emails are written in. You don’t need to know this to use dotMailer!
    
      
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Contact us

Question     What if I have any other questions?

Answer     

contact support@dotmailer.co.uk