Advanced Templates - Frequently Asked Questions
Design questions
How will you know what I want my template to look like?
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.
Do I have to complete a design brief?
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.
Can my email look exactly like my (print) mock-up?
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.
Can I send you brand guidelines and/or corporate colours to incorporate in my design?
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.
When I send you artwork to work from, which format is best?
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.
Can I have drop shadows within my template?
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.
Can I have a particular size of font in my email?
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.
Can I use any font I like?
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.
Will you be using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in my email? I thought they were the future!
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.
What are background images, and can I use them?
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.
Can I just send one big image?
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.
Can I have a main background colour?
Yes - we contain the colour within a table, which means that replies and forwards continue to work.
Can I add links to images?
Absolutely, this is easily achieved through the dotMailer editor.
Do I really need Alt tags?
We’d recommend that you do, for a number of reasons. See
Alt tags
in the glossary for more information.
Can I change a link from the default blue colour to anything else?
Yes - this is simply done by highlighting the link and inserting a text colour.
I have lots of information to go onto my email. Is this bad?
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.
Can the template be of any shape or size?
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.
Can I use vertical lines to separate columns?
We'd recommend you don't. Vertical lines can be achieved by using narrow (commonly one pixel wide) images or table columns. However, many email clients don't render these correctly (often making them appear wider). Additionally, they can be notoriously tricky to update from the visual editor.
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Requirements
Do I need an unsubscribe link?
Yes, if you are sending to UK and EU recipients.
Do I need the ‘read in browser’ link, and does it really have to be at the top of the email?
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.
Do I have to include my Company Number?
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
What text can I edit?
Anything that isn’t an image, for which you'll need an image editor.
Will I be able to update the images?
Yes, if you have the ability to create them. See ‘drop shadows’.
How flexible will my template be?
We always create templates to be as flexible as possible, but it will depend to a certain extent on your knowledge of HTML.
Where will my template be uploaded to?
Your template library – accessed through your dotMailer account, it can be seen in the main navigation on the left-hand-side.
Can I include a recipient’s name, or other personalisation info?
Yes - the information just needs to be included in your address book.
How do I make sure I don’t overwrite my new template?
Always load the template from your library, and save as a new campaign.
Can I have a form embedded into my email?
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.
Can you create a form for me? And host it?
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.
Can I add my own personal actions to personalise the email?
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
Alt text
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.
CSS
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.
Email client
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.
HTML
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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