I recently received a newsletter from one of my professional contacts that’s not in the online marketing business. He had chosen an html format newsletter instead of using plain text. I’ve posted the results below so you can get an idea how his carefully crafted marketing message (the one that represents his business) looked to me.
If you’re doing an online newsletter html can work for you, but you have to be careful. Use in-line CSS and a limited number of images to reduce the annoying X’s. Here’s an example from one of my own sites to show you what I mean.
Personally though, I highly recommend using plain text instead of html. It’s less eye catching, but it’s also less likely to get caught in a spam filter or ignored as an advertisement. For myself, I’ll read anything pertinent and interesting to me – whether it’s written in html or not, and I give my audience the same consideration.
