Guidelines

Best practices for designing e-mailer

1. Keep the standard layout of emailer as suggested below

• The email campaign design should be divided in three parts :- header, mid-container, footer

  • Header

    • Encapsulates the logo of the dept/ministry sending the email campaign along with Ministry/dept name and tag line of the ministry

  • Mid-Container

    • This section has the main content of the email campaign. Main focus of the individual viewing the mail would be on this section. It should be brief and to the point discussing about the campaign and how would it benefit the individual it is being sent to.

  • Footer

    • This section has hyperlinks of ministries along with their respective logos.

    • If the mailer is going out to the entire eSampark Db. This section should incorporate PM's website along with PMO's initiatives such as MyGov, eSampark, Digital India .

• Clean emailer design will have less chance of any abnormalities happening between various browsers and email clients.

 

2. Use Tables

• Email clients live in the past, so all emails must be built using tables for layout.

3. Use Inline Styles

• If this were the website world, every developer would say, "do not use inline styles, create a class for it". Unfortunately, in an email, this is not possible, as the email clients will strip them out. So if anything needs to be styled, use inline styles.

• Elements like font type and size can be used within the <table> tag, but individual styles should be placed on <td>.

4. Wrap the Email in a 100% Width Table

• Email clients only take the code within the body tags, not the body tags themselves. In order to use a background color, you must create a 100% width table to incorporate the background effect.

5. No Wider than 800px

• Many people don't actually open their email; they instead view them in the preview panel. On average the smallest preview panel is around 600-800px, so always design your emails accordingly.

6. Avoid Background Images

• Stick to block colors rather than images for the backgrounds for your text; only use gradients, images, etc. when no text is involved.

7. JavaScript = Junk Email

• You cannot include any type of JavaScript. So no fancy pop-ups or auto-scrolling emails please! If you do decide to include it anyway, your email may be sent to the junk folder. Email clients will see you as a threat. So please stick to plain old HTML.

8. Mobile friendly-responsive design

• Account for mobile-friendliness, if possible. Use media queries to increase text sizes on small screens, provide thumb-sized hit areas for links. Make an email responsive if the design allows for it.

9. Basic Fonts

• Use basic, cross-platform fonts such as Arial, Verdana, Georgia, and Times New Roman.

10. No to single sliced image email campaign

• Don’t design an email that’s essentially one large, sliced-up image. While these kinds of emails look pretty, they perform poorly.

 

Note

With increasing smart algorithms, automated mails are filtered out from the main inbox and often go to either spam or promotions. To avoid such risks, it is advisable to send plain texte-mailers or plain HTML emails which will directly land in the user’s primary folder(INBOX).