Why use plain text emails?

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As an email platform, you’d expect that we send all sorts of emails. And you’d be right, but the template we turn to very often is not the one you’d think. It’s the good old plain text email. Just words on a screen. But why?

Over the years email marketing has evolved to become the glorious tool we enjoy today. Images replaced colourful lines of text, segmented content blocks that adapt to the viewers’ device emerged. And then rich media content like films, GIFs and interactive elements. 

All powerful functions that can help tell your story. But, sadly, functions that the big email providers recognise as indicators that an email is spam. Damn them. They’re not always right either—we’ve all probably sent an email with an image dragged and dropped into the body of the mail. It’s not like pictures and text are only used by email marketers. 

It’s all about spam. And not being spam.

Plain text however, that’s still seen as something that a marketer wouldn’t necessarily do. Regular people like you and I send quick plain text emails to their mates. An email provider like Gmail wouldn’t want you to miss an important mail from a friend. 

And this is why we rely quite heavily on plain text for our transactional emails, because these ones still have the best chance of reaching an inbox without the need to have your account confirmed and approved by an end receiver. They’re also great if you’re in a hurry and just need to tell your contacts about something cool. 

Next time you’re lining up a new mail to your contacts, perhaps try it. Better still try an A/B test. Send one of Minutemailer’s responsive mails to a selection of your contacts, and the same mail as a plain text version to another selection and compare the results.  

Happy plain texting.