everyone who designed marketing emails came across someone else’s work and liked what they saw. At times like these, you probably want to know how to use your idea or design in your next email or campaign. Fortunately, there are ways to find out what they did.
Although, for some applications, plain text emails are still adequate, most marketing emails are content-rich and interactive.
are responsive and use controlled disclosures to make navigation easy, regardless of device.
what is the html code in an email?
If you are new to html code, you can still view the code of every email you receive without any special software. code can be accessed from web and desktop clients.
Similarly, if you’re designing your templates from the campaign monitor, you can also refer to the underlying html. you can even download it, modify it and upload it again.
And if you don’t want to learn to code, that’s fine too. Campaign Monitor’s drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to create beautiful emails without touching or editing code.
how do i see the html in outlook?
in microsoft outlook, double click to open an email. you’ll see an “actions” menu under the “message” tab. click that menu and select “other actions”, then click “view source” to see the html code.
regardless of your default text editor, the html file will open as a .txt file.
how do i see the html in gmail?
If you’re using the gmail web client, you can right-click the email and choose “view page source.” however, this will show you the full html of the web page, including the message information.
using outlook connected to your gmail account will allow you to view only the html of the email directly.
how do i see the html in the campaign monitor?
In campaign monitor, you can see the html from the preview window. once you’ve designed your template, you can open the preview window on the campaign snapshot page and choose “view page source”.
You can save the file by right clicking and selecting “save as” or by copying the text and pasting it into your favorite html compatible text editor. this will allow you to modify the html code locally and then import it back into the campaign monitor for use in future campaigns.
Note that once you modify the html and re-import it online, you will no longer be able to modify it through the UI. you will have to make all future changes to the email in the html code.
how to measure the success of html email code
html makes powerful and responsive email delivery possible. Although plain text emails also work well for some purposes or audiences, marketers generally prefer to advertise their products or services through HTML emails.
By tracking open and click rates, you’ll know which format works for your specific brand and specific audience.
By also segmenting open rates by device, you’ll see when your emails aren’t having the desired effect on mobile customers. you can do it from the “insights” section in campaign monitor.
does it really matter?
with modern html emails, you can add backgrounds, videos, buttons, and just about anything else that web pages have. you can also make sure your emails are responsive, regardless of the device used to open them.
another great aspect of html based emails is the analytics they collect for marketers. With html-based emails, you can track every interaction the recipient makes.
with true plain text emails, this is not really the case. however, plain text emails that are actually html emails formatted to look like plain text may enable parsing.
what now?
If you want to know more about using html encoding in your email designs, check out this guide for more details on how to use it in templates. Although you may be familiar with HTML and CSS, there are some caveats when using them to design HTML-enabled emails, so it’s important to become familiar with them.