Since the publication of my first topic to this day, I regularly receive various questions about the layout of mailing lists. In this article, I will answer them from my point of view, which is based on my personal experience and statistics. If you disagree with me about something, I will be happy to hear your point of view in the comments.

You are a spammer! You will burn in hell! Repent! Why do you need this?

Dear user, the mailing list is not always - there is SPAM. Russian Wikipedia gives this definition of spam:

Spam (English spam) - mass mailing of commercial, political and other advertising or other type of messages (information) to persons who did not express a desire to receive them.

And despite the fact that, according to statistics, about 80% of email traffic is spam, I work on a “fair” mailing list. How does this happen:

Option number 1. Hello, mail to you!

The picture is as follows. There is a customer - the owner of an online store, coupon network or any other service that is trying to either sell / regularly inform the user about something. What happens next? An html greeting letter is being prepared, which is sent to the email database with approximately the following content:

Hello, blah blah blah, we are such-and-such, such-and-such, offers such-and-such and such-and-such. If you are interested in this information, please follow the link and confirm your desire for regular receipt of our mailing list.

When sending such a letter of greeting, I recommend that GET send the user's email in the link that leads to the “subscription”. What happens next? Or we display a page with text for the user:

Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter! Further emails will be sent to% email_ transmitted_ through_GET%

You can even send GET not email itself, but its hash, in order to prevent manipulation with subscribers by substituting soap in the browser line.

But there is a more preferable option. It consists in the fact that when clicking on the link the user sees a form in which the “email subscriber” field is already filled in, while we give the user the right to change the value of this field. We also provide a choice in the form of checkboxes, which is what the user subscribes to, be it: news of the service, receipt of new products, publication of new interesting articles and other things. After all, a person may be interested in one thing, there is no need to send him everything that you consider necessary.

There is one more, extremely important field - the mailing format. This is HTML and text version (plain / text). This item is the answer to the question “HTML mailings must die! Stop sending this crap! ” Give the user the right to choose and everyone is happy.

Option number 2. Do you agree?

This option involves obtaining consent to the newsletter, as in the first case, but instead of invitation letters, you offer the user to subscribe at the time of registration on your website / service. In this case, there is one very important BUT. Never, do you hear !? Never use the following inscription !!! “By clicking on the“ Register ”button you confirm your desire to receive regular newsletters from us.”

The question of spam has been settled on this question.

In which editor to prepare layout?

Without discovering America, I will call Notepad ++ . This is my preference. You can use any other editor convenient for you. I hasten to warn that the use of wysiwyg-editors can "break" your layout, when using font tags, for example. Although you can safely use the dreamwever visual editor without fear for your layout, using span tags instead of font. The use of formatting tags is described in the first topic . I can not vouch for other visual editors. One way or another, before sending any letter, test in all popular clients.

How to make up% something%?

Read my previous topics, as well as the method of scientific testing.

What email clients should you look for when preparing newsletters?

MS Outlook 2003-2010, mail.ru, rabmler mail, Yandex mail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail (Classic), Thunderbird 2.0-3.0, Hotmail, Windows Live Mail, Apple Mail 3-4, AOL Mail, Lotus Notes 8-8.5, the Bat!

Can you provide statistics on the use of email clients?

No, but I think the survey on the hub will not be superfluous. Let and not the most objective.

How to test layout?

Some mass mailing services provide similar tools, but in my life I haven’t seen many of them. Pardot has this feature (it provides screenshots of all popular email clients, but not interfaces), but since this service is designed for integrated marketing, it is not practical to purchase a package of services for testing layout. In RuNet, I have not seen such services. In mailchimp the tools available, but as a paid option (he has not tried). Also in the bourgeois Google gives quite a few links to similar services, but there are no free ones. If anyone used, please comment in the comments. If there is no desire to spend money, then simply send letters to your mailboxes and view the mailing list in them with your own hands.

What is Cross-Mapping?

Derived from the word Crossbrowser. Essentially, the correct layout is displayed in email clients and web interfaces.

Where to get ready-made templates for newsletters?

The mailchimp and campaignmonitor services provide such services, but I am not completely sure of their cross-mailing, as I use my technique for layout.

But how do you send letters? Something I can not send a made-up letter through outlook!

Outlook and other email clients and web interfaces are not intended for this. Their goal is personal correspondence. For mass mailings, there are many services on the network. Or you can send the newsletter from your server having a self-written solution, for example, to php. Desktop programs also exist, but I have no business with them.

What service is better to carry out mailing?

How many people, so many opinions. I can only bring my own.

Unisender.com

A fairly good domestic service, but I'm not sure that there is the possibility of separating subscribers into html and plain / text versions. I also don’t like their interface.

Mailcube.ru

Also Russian service. Great minimalistic interface. No extra bells and whistles and newfangled tools. Compiled a customer database, uploaded layout, sent a letter. See statistics. Also not sure about the separation between html and plain / text versions.

Mailchimp.com aka Monkey

Market leader in email marketing. Extremely friendly and easy to use interface, flexible tariff scheme, ease of operation. Tips and video tutorials everywhere. All in English. There is a free tariff, which implies placing the monkey logo (in footer) in each letter.

Campaignmonitor.com

Also a well-known mailing list service, with a pleasant and extremely convenient interface. Long been on the market. Provides ready-made templates and cross-sharing tables.

How to attach pictures to the letter?

A picture can be attached directly to the letter, but this is implemented only in self-written solutions, as far as I know. All services offer an indication of the absolute url to the picture, which is located on any hosting. Mail services also provide such hosting.

How not to get spam?

First of all do not send spam. And also always establish a link to the unsubscribe, do not use large images, do not send letters as a whole picture, well, take into account the human factor. Everything possible must be done so that at least people click on the button “This is spam!”.

Do you accept layout orders?

Yes. I can also draw a newsletter. By the way, I am very touched by freelance ads that say they need to make up the newsletter, and provide links to my topics with the postscript "You can read how to typeset here."

How much is the layout?

There are no clear prices. It all depends on the complexity of the design layout.

Another question ...

Questions not included in this FAQ must have received answers in previous topics. If you missed something, ask in the comments.