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How to build a sweet histogram for your HTML email
- wikwocket 13y agoVery nice. HTML email and horribly arcane <table> code are like peanut butter and chocolate - messy to assemble, but you can't argue with the result. When I saw the first pic, I wondered if this would just be generating an image, or using complicated CSS (which can be problematic for older email clients), but using tables to achieve a result that should work in most clients, and show up even with images turns off, is pretty sweet. The only thing better would be some screenshots as to how this actually appears in various versions of Outlook, Thunderbird, GMail, etc.
- saryant 13y ago> The only thing better would be some screenshots as to how this actually appears in various versions of Outlook, Thunderbird, GMail, etc. Sure thing! http://imgur.com/a/C7XIX http://imgur.com/a/C7XIX Outlook 2010, Apple Mail 6, Thunderbird and iOS 6. Any other's you're interested in? (Tip: Litmus is a terrific tool for email testing. Not affiliated, just a happy customer)
- leephillips 13y ago"Any other's you're interested in?" mutt?
- saryant 13y agoWe send a multi-part message so that text-only clients get a plain text mailer as well as HTML.
- wikwocket 13y agoThank you for doing this. I laugh whenever I open the plaintext version of an email and it still has the default text of "Insert a text version of your message here for users without images to read"!
- saryant 13y agoIt's actually one of our cofounders who wrote this, not me, but I'll pass that along. :)
- leephillips 13y ago"The result is a bad first impression for new mail-ees." What's a "new mail-ee"? I hope it's not a spam target. Sending HTML email is what gives a bad impression. If you want to send an HTML document, or an image or PDF file, send an attachment. If it's HTML, then, in the unlikely event I want to see it, it'll open in my browser, and this ridiculous hack won't be required.
- gwern 13y ago> Sending HTML email is what gives a bad impression. A/B tests or GTFO.
- leephillips 13y agoThat's fair. I have extensive A/B test results with tens of thousands of data points. I'm the only subject, though.
- eli 13y agoMost HTML is sent multipart with a text version too. You might consider setting your mail client to favor that version.
- gwern 13y agoNo, you don't have that. You have tens of thousands of uncontrolled estimates, without any comparison points, or systematic or objective data collection.
- leephillips 13y agoSort of implied by me being the only test subject, no? Let me try again without the confusing humor element: HTML email gives a bad impression to me and people who share my prejudices and attitudes.
- gwern 13y ago> Sort of implied by me being the only test subject, no? Not at all. For example, you could be sent the same email with a difference separated by a period of months, where the 2 versions of the email are directly compared (sort of a within-subjects design). Or the difference could be randomly applied to all incoming emails, and then the overall populations compared (between-subjects). Just because _n_=1 doesn't mean you can't do experiments on yourself - I do self-experiments all the time: http://www.gwern.net/tags/experiments http://www.gwern.net/tags/experiments > HTML email gives a bad impression to me and people who share my prejudices and attitudes. You don't track your clicks. For all you know, you still click more and get more out of the HTML emails, despite your negative attitude.
- eglp 13y agoI gave this a shot, but it doesn't instantly let me see all the interesting data... Could I have an invite? Or process your incoming requests at once (;
- saryant 13y agoWe're adding in invite code to the post, one sec!