Publicizing discounts and expiration dates are great ways to attract new businesses from casual readers. With this, it creates a sense of urgency for each sale. However, when using those techniques, it is important to remember that you may not be reaching your full audience without including a text version with every HTML email newsletter you send.
On average, about 5% of your readership will be using email clients that can only display plain text content. Also, the number of readers that receive your publication on mobile devices, such as Blackberries and iPhones, are consistently increasing.
According to industry sources there are more than 16 million Blackberry subscribers worldwide. What’s more is, Apple predicts to sell 14 million iPhones across the world this year alone. These figures show that more and more people are using mobile devices to check email.
Blackberry users will not be able to receive HTML emails on their phones. In contrast, iPhone users are able to view HTML newsletters. For this reason, it is important to include both an HTML and text version of your newsletters because you won’t know which method your customers are using to receive their email.
If iContact is your email marketing service, you are required to create a text version with every HTML newsletter. Both versions of your email are sent to your customers. By having both versions of your newsletter it creates increased visibility which gives readers multiple options of viewing your information.
I’ll be back later in the week to talk about useful tips in email marketing.
Cheers,
Ryan
