HTML Email Experiment Results

You may have heard of Marlon Sanders, a very well known and long established Internet marketer. Marlon specializes in teaching others how to succeed in Internet marketing using his proven formulas. I’ve purchased a number of Marlon’s products and have found them to be high quality and full of good information.

I mention the above because as a result of having purchased from him, I’m on Marlon’s mailing list. Every week or so I get an email from him containing marketing tips, promos for his latest products, etc. Until recently, these emails were in plain text. A couple of weeks ago, the email arrived in HTML format.

Being a savvy marketer, Marlon is always trying new things and this latest experiment with HTML email was just that: an experiment. To be frank, the email was very poorly done. Marlon asked for feedback and boy, did he get it! When I skimmed the comments on his blog, they were almost universally negative.

Being a smart marketer, Marlon took the feedback to heart and this week send out another HTML email with a new and different format. To say that it is a major improvement is an understatement! This time, the layout is clean, easy to read, and uses pictures in such a way that they add to the content instead of just looking fancy.

I took several lessons out of this experiment and wanted to share them with you. First, don’t be afraid to try something new. Granted, HTML email isn’t all that new, but if you haven’t used it before, it’s new to you! Plain text is fine up to a point, but if you need to provide a picture to better explain what you’re writing about, HTML is the only way to do it. For that reason, it pays to learn how to use HTML email.

The second lesson is to ask for opinions from your readers and customers. If you don’t ask, most people will never give you their opinion. If they hate what you’re doing, they’ll just move on and you’ll never know why. Even if they love what you’re doing, unless they have an opportunity to say so, they generally won’t. So, if you want to know what your customers are thinking, ask them!

The third lesson is that HTML email has to be done right. Marlon’s first try was poor because he tried to get too cute with it, putting a background image on it and using a font that looked like it was typewritten, among other things. HTML email is a primary example of the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid! Keep the graphics to a minimum. Use them primarily to enhance the content. If you have any doubt about whether a graphic belongs in the email, leave it out. Keep the font easy on the eyes. Use a font that is large enough and very readable. There’s a reason why Arial and Times Roman are the default fonts!

Finally, Marlon noted that sales of the featured products were higher for the original HTML attempt than previous emails. It will be interesting to see if that trend continues with this week’s effort. It could very well have been a coincidence, so it will take a few more emails in the new format to determine its effect on sales. Who knows? The crappy HTML format may prove to be a sales winner for some unknown reason. I’ll be interested to see how that plays out.

If you’d like to get on Marlon’s mailing list, here’s a free ebook he offers that has a lot of great tips for marketers:

The Best of Marlon Sanders

Marlon’s mailing list is a weekly source of excellent marketing information and well worth the read. He’s got his own unique style that’s fun to read as well as informative.

John The Geek