Plain Text Emails Yield 17% More Clickthroughs Than HTML

[caption id="attachment_67744" align="alignright" width="350"] "email," Creative Commons license. | Credit: Flickr by Dennis Skley[/caption] [Marketers interested in learning more about email marketing can attend the free virtual show, All About Email Virtual Conference and Expo. To attend the show Target Marketing is hosting from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET on Thursday, Sept. 21, please register here.] Marketo tested and discovered, much to the vendor’s chagrin, that text-based emails performed much better than their prettier, more creative HTML counterparts. While both had the same open rate, Mike Madden writes in Marketo’s Aug. 11 e-newsletter that his research into their effectiveness revealed which type was actually better for marketers. “In the end,” he says in his blog post, “we found that focusing a subscriber on a single-link, text-based email produced higher clicks on the call-to-action.” Madden says with 2.5 billion emails sent every second, marketers should know text-based emails have: 21 percent higher unique click-to-open rates on the offer link 17 percent higher unique clickthrough rates on the offer link Madden says there’s a big reason the increased clickthroughs make sense. Text-based Emails Are Simple, With Fewer Distractions Recipients can see the CTA right away in text-based emails, he points out. That plays into the truism that if email marketers reduce distractions, they can increase conversions. In other words, treat emails like a landing page. “When we think about the elements that make up a strong landing page, we think: clear copy, an obvious call-to-action, visual cues like arrows or contrasting colors, and a form,” he says. “Are emails so different?” On the tested HTML email, recipients who didn’t click on the CTA clicked on distractions — like the Marketo logo, Twitter and Facebook. “In fact,” Madden says, “nearly 16 percent of clicks went to other links” on the HTML version. Text-based Emails Are Time-Tested In a Target Marketing article I wrote in 2014 about the effectiveness of text-based emails, a few of the tips still apply: Include white space, so there’s no gray wall of type Avoid line-breaks Proof text-based emails, too Don’t overdo the links, “Otherwise, the email looks like a giant hyperlink; especially because links provide the only color.” What do you think, marketers? Please respond in the comments section below.

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Plain Text Emails Yield 17% More Clickthroughs Than HTML

Heather Fletcher

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