And once again, the anti-HTML zealots are out in force, declaring that just because they don't like HTML email, no one else should be permitted to receive HTML email.<p>A counterpoint:<p>I subscribe to several HTML newsletters, and the fact that they are in HTML is a huge advantage to me. It means that JavaScript Weekly (Peter Cooper's newsletter) isn't just a mass of URLs. And it means that I can quickly preview the newest fonts from FontShop without having to visit their site.<p>You may not like HTML email, but it has tangible benefits to many of us.
Modern email should be completely banning any markup but spaces, going to UTF-8-32 encoding. Maaaybe increasing the maximum column width from 80 to 120, but that's stretching it (hehe).
If the goal is to make an email feel like it's written by a human being, why not emulate what human emails actually look like? Does the author photo actually make it feel more human, or less? I can't think of a time I've ever gotten a real-person email that included a picture of the sender.
> 79% of your readers spent longer than 2+ seconds looking at your email<p>I understand how opened emails can be tracked without javascript, via server hits to img files, but what magic allows you to track <i>how long</i> it was opened?
I want to underline one change they made that in my experience makes a huge impact: GET RID OF THE HEADER / LOGO<p>This is one of the basic steps that I've seen drive conversion almost every time be it ecommerce checkout / lead gen / email / etc.<p>The header distracts from your content, eliminate it or limit it as much as possible, especially when you have somebody that's already engaged (somebody added to cart, joined your list, etc).<p>In email they did exactly the right thing - center the user on the brand w/the "from address" or the title vs. wasting pixels in your content.<p>Several years ago I wrote about including company name in the email title as an "Always" winner for email:<p><a href="http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/optimize-your-email-conversion-rate-with-3-quick-tips/" rel="nofollow">http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/optimize-your-e...</a>