Email creation workflow -- What can we do better?

Hi VR Lounge People,

I'm exploring ways to improve our Wizard and Canvas email creation tools and I want hear from you. I'd like to know what you think is or isn't working so we can make changes that make it easier for you to create and send email. Whatever your specific concerns are let me know your thoughts so I can include your feedback as we consider changes. I'm looking forward to seeing your replies to this discussion!

Bryan
Product Manager, VR

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Adamson on July 20, 2009 at 9:42am: Bridget, thanks for you comment. You're not missing anything. I'm sad to report that we don't have this functionality right now. But your request does echo and confirm what many others have said and we're listening. I'd be interested to hear from you what other specific features or components you or your company would want in a drip marketing tool like this. Would triggered emails and auto-responders also be of importance?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Delp on September 15, 2009 at 10:56am: Hi Bryan,

I agree with having a very simple template, one that looks more like a text email without all the fancy HTML tables and such. Maybe three styles, body, bold, and link.

And I second the motion for a "Save" button.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by PPTCO on September 23, 2009 at 12:53pm: I'd like more control over two technical aspects of the emails VR sends out:

1. Plain text messages should optionally use format=flowed, as explained in RFC 3676. This would make them look better in many email clients.

Explanation: Right now, VR lets you type text messages in long paragraphs. It displays each paragraph broken into lines, using a width based on the size of the editing window. But internally it keeps each paragraph as one long line. Then, when you send the message, it breaks the paragraph into 70 character lines. The line breaks are typically different than those displayed while editing. Then the recipient's email program displays the message. If its message area is smaller than 70 characters (common on gmail, for one example, with smaller windows), it will break each line again, resulting in ugly alternating long and short lines.

The format=flowed technique fixes this. It lets an email program communicate that certain groups of lines form paragraphs, and gives permission to the email client to move the line breaks to fit the message area when displaying the message (in just the same way VR displays line breaks when you're creating it).

Technically, it's simple. The message header line that now says "Content-Type: text/plain" would change to say "Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed". Each line that ends with a space character indicates a soft line break that the client may remove. So VR would take each paragraph in the original message, remove any existing spaces at its end, then break the paragraph as it does now, but adding a space just before each line break.

The result is a message that will look the same as before in any old email clients that don't understand format=flowed, but will look much better in newer clients whenever the message area isn't exactly 70 characters wide.

Using format=flowed also produces much nicer results when such a message is quoted in a reply.

2. It would be nice if VR provided a way to embed images in an HTML message. Right now, images all have to be external, so email clients often don't display them. Embedded images don't have that problem, though they have other drawbacks. Despite their drawbacks, they're the best option in some circumstances.

(There are multiple ways to embed images. The one VR should support is the method used by common email programs like OE when you use its Insert Image command. It attaches the image file, then uses a cid: URL to reference it from within the HTML message. Technical details are here.)

Advantages:
Most email clients will display the image, even if the user hasn't said to load images, since they're not external.

Disadvantages:
Some old email clients won't display the image inline, but only as an attachment at the end. Other email clients will do both, displaying the image inline and also as an attachment.
This increases the message size, of course. So it's unsuitable for large images, or messages with many images. But you can do a lot within VR's 45 KB limit.
You can't track whether someone's read the message by seeing if they loaded its images, if they're all internal.

It would be nice if VR supported these on an image-by-image basis (via a check box in the image properties, for instance), so you could use this technique for small graphical elements like logos or background gradations, but not for product photos, say.

Steven; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Brooke Browne on October 28, 2009 at 9:28am: Is this why the line spacing looks one way when I preview it in Outlook, but includes tons of unnecessary line breaks when I preview in my Blackberry?

The BB, of all places, is where I want LESS line breaks - it's a pain to scroll so much!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by PPTCO on September 23, 2009 at 1:35pm: Also, the seed list selection process for sending test emails would be better if it didn't require so much copying to create new lists. I'd like a way for it to show me all the names and emails I've ever entered for test emails, with a checkbox next to each one, so I could check off which ones I wanted to use this time. Optionally, save the new subset under a new Seed List name.; ▶ Reply to This