Creating E-mail Newsletters Again!

[Fotoman]

I've heard the arguments against using html and fully accept and understand the reasons why. What I'm looking for here is constructive advice rather than the "Don't use it – use Plain Text!" Thousands of companies send well-designed e-mails in html to good effect and with very few problems.

I have a small group of people (14), all capable of receiving mail in html format, to which I would like to send e-mail using html to 'pretty it up', include a standard banner heading for the Club, the occasional photo, coloured text, etc. and have a few questions. All are using Outlook or Outlook Express. To test the Newsletter, I'm e-mailing it myself to check the layout but am having difficulties.

1. The first problem I came up against was getting the size of the banner heading photo right. It does seem that the graphic inserted into the message area needs to be considerably smaller than what would be considered the 'correct' size. Does anyone know what would be the correct width setting for a banner going across the page?
2. Is there such a thing as "Liquid Design" in e-mail html'ing, so that the message fits even if the page is not maximised?
3. Is it preferrable to use use tables when designing these e-mail newsletters.
4. Once designed, how do I save it for use again the following month?
5. If I design a page in html (in FrontPage for example)and save it as a .htm or .html, when I go to 'insert file' the html page gets inserted as an Attachment and not in the main message body. Any help here would be appreciated.

Many thanks for anyone who can help a poor and distressed e-mailer.

 

[WillShakespeare]

1. The first problem I came up against was getting the size of the banner heading photo right. It does seem that the graphic inserted into the message area needs to be considerably smaller than what would be considered the 'correct' size. Does anyone know what would be the correct width setting for a banner going across the page?
***Unfortunately there is no real correct width, for emails I work on a 640x480 template, so my header banner would be 640 width.

2. Is there such a thing as "Liquid Design" in e-mail html'ing, so that the message fits even if the page is not maximised?
***Make sure you put everything in a table, and set the table width to be 100% rather than 640px for example.


3. Is it preferrable to use use tables when designing these e-mail newsletters.
***yes, if you want the liquid effect above.


4. Once designed, how do I save it for use again the following month?
***How are you designing it? If doing it in Outlook or Word, then this gets tricky. I would suggest writing it in HTML, or using a WISIWYG editor. There are some good free ones, such as HAPEdit. Then just save it as a template. In Outlook, to send, use the page as stationery. You can then use the Stationery by selecting at the top of the Outlook window: Actions, Use Stationery... To set up stationery using the html template, go to Tools, Options, Mail Format, and click Staionery Picker. Click New and you can browse to the saved html template.


5. If I design a page in html (in FrontPage for example)and save it as a .htm or .html, when I go to 'insert file' the html page gets inserted as an Attachment and not in the main message body. Any help here would be appreciated.
***See above...


hth,

Will

 

[Fotoman]

Thanks for that Will, most helpful.

I have been testing a few things out which seem to work.

Firstly, somehow, I opened up a New Page with a .mht extension. (Not sure what this is – MHTML?)
Next I copied and pasted in a previous html e-mail to see how it was put together (yes, it was all done in Tables set 100%). The photos didn't copy over but I managed to work round that. (They were there but just white boxes)
Made a banner heading in PhotoShop and kept saving for web at various pixel sizes until it fitted. The only way I could see if it fitted properly was to e-mail the page to myself as the size of the graphic on the page was approx. 25% of what it should be. (i.e. it would not fill the Cell when editing, but filled the Cell when e-mailed to me)

It seems that the page is edited in Word so, to e-mail the page as a Newsletter, I used 'Send to...' then chose 'Send to Mail Recipient' (did NOT choose "as an Attachment). This appears to work fine.

I could save this page as newsletter.mht but when I opened it up again, the only way I could e-mail it without it being dropped in the 'attachment' box was to choose 'Edit document in Word' then use the 'Send to...' option again as above. (This option is not available when clicking 'Send to...' when the page is first opened)

So, in all, I have found a way of doing it which is fairly simple. I shall try again using a proper html page and saving it as a Template and see how we go from there.

Thanks again, Will.

Fotoman

____________________________________

Crime Pays...
...unless you're a motorist!

 

[WillShakespeare]

LOL! The way you are doing it may seem simple, but it is at best a workaround. The mht format is a mail header template. Even if the person can receive html (as you said before) they won't necessarily see what you see if you do it this way round.

Whatever works best for you is probably the way to go, but if you learn now how to set up stationery, then you can have multiple stationery, and all sorts, and opening a new mail using stationery is a lot easier than your workaround.

Will