Email: HTML or Plain Text?

When a html email hits my gmail account, its almost always never displayed correctly and I seldom click the tabs at the top to put things right. I therefore prefer plain text emails for the convenience of just opening up the email and reading it. Very simple and with little fuss.

But I am probably the exception, many people like all the fancy stuff that comes with html emails

I prefer text. 80%+ of people view email on their mobile devices. HTML will sometimes not re-size properly for a mobile device and its a painful experience for the user.

Text emails always scale nicely to fit the mobile window. Also, pretty graphics etc are great but for the most part people don't care. They just want to read their emails and move on to the next item of the day - which we typically have hundreds of things to do, right?

I always tell people write your emails with this thought in mind - "When I get email in my inbox - how quickly will I read and delete it? And what will keep my attention just one more second?"

Think about it folks I delete emails pretty quickly if its a crappy html email that I can't read on my mobile device from someone I am vaguely familiar with telling me I can get a #1 spot on Google. But if that same email comes through as a text email that is re-sized so I can read it and is not long paragraphs - chances are I will read at least a little and then make a decision to continue or delete.

I stick to the old school way: text. The best way to find out, however, is for you to split test a text vs. and HTML email and see which one gets better open rate and clicks.

I use html when I send a new broadcast to my list. It permits me to track the opens with my autoresponder and see which email converts the most opens to clicks.
My autoresponder permits me to use both for those who have issues with html.

I send http link to my client, so html editor is best for me, that way I can see that the link is really sent as a link

I'm a fan of the HTML version that only uses text. Images are fairly pointless to display since most mail services have images disabled by default.

I prefer HTML. Images do not show in text-based emails.

Reasons to Use Plain Text

• Displays Consistently Across Email Clients
• Always Necessary for All Messages (whether you use HTML or not)
• Looks More Like a Personal Email Message

Reasons Not to Use Plain Text

• Can't use Colors or Graphics
• Can't turn words like "Click Here" into Links - must type out URL
• Harder to Break Up Into Easy-to-Scan/Read Sections
• Can't Use Multiple-Column Formats Easily

I prefer using HTML, it has more advantages compared to plain text. But I will always put back up plain text follow-ups for every HTML messages in my autoresponder. This is because some email system couldn't deliver the HTML messages, only plain text.

i use html all the time because there are lots more benefits

one of the main ones is the ablity to include hyper links in your emails with a better call to action

paul

People are more willing to check mails on their phone rather log on through computer. I personally like to use phone for checking mail. As the amount of smart phone user is increasing, I believe plain text is more easily communicated than HTML.

I think, Google provide a very unique service related to G-mail because when the internet slow than the HTML Work good, Yes, I agree that, It's have not good feature but good.But still on those time we suffered the internet slow problem, It's help there.

Plain text are nice, as we know that.

I prefer plain text. Easier/faster to scan.

If it does not capture my attention within a couple of SHORT paragraphs, I delete.

Jeanne

preferably plain text. easy to deliver your content and faster to scan.

sometime technical problems happen to html scan.
If it does not get my attention within the first few paragraphs, I'll delete it.

I'll prefer using plain text. for me its easy to use and edit.

sometime technical problems happen to html scan and most of the time I donno why.