HTML vs Text emails and deliverability | Community
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A
Anonymous
December 23, 2016
Solved

HTML vs Text emails and deliverability

  • December 23, 2016
  • 4 replies
  • 4883 views

Alright, I know there is probably something on here about this, but I have as specific question.

If I send a well-crafted HTML email with a nice banner and CTA button along with the plain-text version (as is best practice), is it best practice to send a different version of the text-based email?

Example:

From: marketing@email.mycompany.io

HTML

:: BANNER ::

Some text here.

Click Here (linking to a landing page. Link masked)

Some text here.

TEXT

Some text here

Click Here <pages.mycompany.com/xxxxxxxxxx>

Some text here.

Those two are the same, however, in order to reconcile the different domains, can one alter the text email to not have a call to action like that. Maybe without the link. The assumption I am making is that servers will not look too kindly on the different domains being displayed by the sender and the link.

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

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Best answer by Josh_Hill13

Hi Franklin,

Do you mean that your HTML CTA URL and Text URL will somehow be different? Why would they be? Many spam servers will click the links to check that they resolve to a non blacklisted or malware location, so it will likely know that info.marketo.com tracking link matches your unwrapped link elsewhere.

However, your text URLs will get wrapped by Marketo, so not sure if this is really an issue for you.

I wouldn't be surprised if some servers look unkindly on html and text versions that have large inconsistencies.

4 replies

A
Anonymous
December 23, 2016

Also, be patient. I am very new to the technical side of deliverability. I am trying to wrap my head around all the moving parts. Thanks!

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
New Participant
December 23, 2016

Like Josh, I'm not clear on why you think your HTML and text parts will (or should) have different domains. Unless there's a specific need to leave a link untracked, it will bounce off the tracking domain, regardless of which part of a multipart email it appears in.

But a very short text part with a different CTA would be fine in any case. Text parts can be used to "stuff" normal text into a malicious email in an attempt to throw off content analysis, but if you're not doing that, don't worry.

I think Emily's point is great: you can't measure impressions for non-image-enabled messages, so having different successes just makes for more confusion.

A
Anonymous
December 23, 2016

@Josh Hill​

Thanks for the responses!

Sorry for the confusion. I don't think that the URLs will be different. What I am asking is if the sender domain and the links in the body contain a different domain, do servers look down on this? email.mycompany.io (sender) and pages.mycompany.com (asset). According to our IT department, those need to reconciled. Would look like, email.mycompany.io (sender) and pages.mycompany.io (assets). They said this could be a problem. However, I don't see how.

Let me know.

SanfordWhiteman
SanfordWhiteman
New Participant
December 23, 2016

email.mycompany.io (sender) and pages.mycompany.com (assets). They said this could be a problem.

This will not be a problem. It is, however, a classic misguided worry.

What they should be worrying about is getting DMARC, DKIM, and (to a degree) SPF set up correctly.

Josh_Hill13
Josh_Hill13Accepted solution
New Participant
December 23, 2016

Hi Franklin,

Do you mean that your HTML CTA URL and Text URL will somehow be different? Why would they be? Many spam servers will click the links to check that they resolve to a non blacklisted or malware location, so it will likely know that info.marketo.com tracking link matches your unwrapped link elsewhere.

However, your text URLs will get wrapped by Marketo, so not sure if this is really an issue for you.

I wouldn't be surprised if some servers look unkindly on html and text versions that have large inconsistencies.

    A
    Anonymous
    December 23, 2016

    I have zero insight on the deliverability due to a different domain on the sender and in the email. The hard part is that you have no idea who is getting text and who is getting HTML so I'm not sure how you would measure this. Do you notice low deliverability currently or recently?

    A
    Anonymous
    December 23, 2016

    Not recently. We have changed a lot of our practices. According to Marketo's email performance reports, we see on average 97%+ deliverability. This is true for both large and small sends.

    A
    Anonymous
    December 23, 2016

    Wow, good delivery numbers!

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