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Can't most of the results be attributed to it simply being different? If everyone started sending marketing emails like this, then they would start looking lik
by Klathmon 9y ago
Can't most of the results be attributed to it simply being different?
If everyone started sending marketing emails like this, then they would start looking like advertisements, they would feel less personal, spam and "promotional" filters would adapt, and you'd be back to square 1.
Plus, I very much like the "Promotional" filters for email, both as someone that receives it, and someone that has sent it.
Email spam is annoying because it's in your way, it interrupts your day, and almost "forces" you to pay attention to it, which is annoying.
The "promotional" tab in gmail (or the similar group in Inbox) fixed that problem for me. Now I go and look through it when I want, and I not only read more of them, but i've done more "action" from them (rather than get annoyed at spam, i've seen that something is on sale, or a new product is released that i was looking forward to).
If there were a way to "mark" my emails to go into that tab voluntarily as a sender, I would do it. The whole idea that you should be fighting against how the user wants to group their email seems backwards. If they don't want to see it, forcing them to see it isn't going to make them like it...
- pc86 9y agoI love the promotional filter. I can look through the 50-60 promos and newsletters I get every day at one shot, open the 0-5 that look interesting then wipe everything. Then something happened where Bryan Harris' VideoFruit emails started coming directly into my inbox rather than the promo folder where they had been. Guess which is the only email list I've unsubscribed from in the last month?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ams6110 9y agoI like the promotional filter too. I never open it.
- pc86 9y agoWhich is a shame, because you're incentivizing people to try and get around it. Nobody's forcing you to sign up for these email lists, and you can unsubscribe at any time. I don't understand the hate these lists garner.
- oddlyaromatic 9y ago>If everyone started sending marketing emails like this, then they would start looking like advertisements, they would feel less personal, spam and "promotional" filters would adapt, and you'd be back to square 1. True, but this is the case for every other marketing technique also. There will never be one permanent "best" way to get the most attention from readers for exactly this reason. The article does seem to miss this aspect. Plain email is currently probably a reasonable move in certain cases, in the ongoing dance of trying to get things read. I do agree, though, that using plain email to avoid being filtered as a promotional message is not a respectful out very useful angle. I'd prefer to receive lightly formatted newsletters that work fine on mobile and were identified as marketing on my devices.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y ago> If everyone started sending marketing emails like this, then they would start looking like advertisements I’m not sure they would. They’d look more like 'normal' emails. Very few people, in my experience, apply any formatting to their personal emails whatsoever, let alone go to great efforts designing a layout, colour scheme, etc. Currently, 'html email' is almost a euphemism for 'advert'; plain text emails are more like product placement in that they blend in with the 'real' content.
- da_chicken 9y agoRemember when websites started to make advertisements that look like articles? How long did it take you to learn what was an ad and what is a legitimate article?
- ubermonkey 9y ago>Very few people, in my experience, apply any formatting to their personal emails whatsoever Outside of technical circles, this isn't really true IME. I mean, I fought the plaintext good fight for years, but now in the year of our lord 2017, I frequently send emails that include boldfaced headings, indented paragraphs, true bulleted lists, etc., because it improves readability vs. "ocean of plain text" for most people.
- Terr_ 9y ago
- _jal 9y agoOne way it works better is that there are people, like me, who have noticed that humans who want to talk to me (as opposed to wanting to sell me something) don't send HTML email. So on my private personal account (not the ones I use for important things like banks), all HTML email is filtered directly to /dev/null. That's caught exactly one personal email I'm aware of in ~15 years (I forget exactly when I added that to procmail). It might have hit others, but it is a far better false-positive rate than any other individual test.
- gutnor 9y agoDo the email client still default to TXT nowadays ? Regardless how basic the email, it seems Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail always send them in HTML and I need to do something special to send it in plain text. At work, the mail very often have some sort of minor formatting. A bold sentence here, a reply in a different colour there, or even simply links. Except for automated alert message from a system or another, the emails are basically always HTML.
- _jal 9y agoMost of my friends and family to use Gmail; one uses Hotmail, and I have no trouble getting mail from any of them. I have no idea what Outlook does. A lot of my work email indeed is HTML - people do love their red text and jokey memes. I'm talking about my personal mailbox that I use almost exclusively for talking to friends and family. "Works on my machine."
- KGIII 9y agoIn Thunderbird, you have to change it to plain text. I default to sending plain text, as a general rule. I usually read in plain text but currently have one system set to view in simple HTML. I forget why I changed that.
- conductr 9y agoI assume HTML is fine so long as you limit the styling so it appears like a person wrote it
- 9y ago