New feature: Quick-start your plain text version

Published February 26, 2008 by David Greiner

We all know that having a plain text version is an essential component of a well designed email campaign. For people who use email clients that can't display HTML, and for those who prefer plain text, we need to provide information equivalent to the HTML component.

By the time you have fought your way through the endless incompatibilities of email client rendering however, it can be hard work getting yourself excited about a well formatted text version.

Good news! We've just added the ability to jump start your plain text email by automatically pulling all the text out of your HTML version. We can't do all the work for you, but we can save you some time and hassle.

Screenshot showing the link to import text from HTML at step 2.5

Just click the 'import it from your HTML' link, wait a moment and up will pop your text, stripped of all HTML, your links replaced with the relevant URLs written like so: [http://www.campaignmonitor.com] and your webversion and unsubscribe tags converted to the plain text tag format.

The whole thing is formatted to our recommended width, so that you have the maximum chance of everything working. Then all you need to do is a little tidying to make things neater, and remove anything not relevant for the plain text.

For example, from an upcoming MailBuild newsletter, which looks like this in HTML:

screenshot showing the MailBuild HTML newsletter

Campaign Monitor can automatically generate the following text:

screenshot showing text generated from the MailBuild newsletter

We hope that will save you a lot of time, and should lead to more nicely formatted plain text versions in the future. Don't forget to checkout our plain text templates and tips for more ways to make your plain text more effective.

8 Comments

Posted in:

  1. Dave Greiner
    February 26, 2008 2:19pm

    Hi newGuy. Yes, we do automatically create a multi-part email, but we give like to give you complete control over the formatting of your plain text version. Many of our customers put in the extra work to ensure this version is as easy to read as possible, and this new shortcut makes this process much easier.

    This text version will be included along with the HTML version in a single “multi-part” email and the correct version will be displayed depending on the individual recipients preference.

  2. Steve
    February 26, 2008 6:20pm

    WOOO HOOO
    Thanks for letting the e-cat out of the e-bag with the Mailbuild custom domains!!!!!!!!!!!

    Great new text-version feature - I think we expected this to come along soon since it’s been standard in Mailbuild for a while.

    You guys rock - we love you!
    Steve

  3. Dave Greiner
    February 26, 2008 6:39pm

    Nice spotting Steve, but at least we announced that feature a few weeks back on the site ;)

    The MailBuild version of this was actually a little easier to nail, because the content your clients add was already separate from the HTML itself. This version has to handle anything you guys throw at it as gracefully as possible. Quite the challenge.

  4. Martin Baker
    February 26, 2008 9:58pm

    Absolutely fantastic. I just used this feature yesterday and while there was still some tidying up to do, it saved a lot of time.

  5. Matthew Ryan
    February 29, 2008 5:38pm

    This is a really neat feature.  Saves alot of time creating a seperate versions, I am yet to test this but I hope is works well :)

  6. Meredith Self
    March 1, 2008 5:44am

    Great feature. Huge time saver, though took a little cleaning. 
    Dig the ‘add inline’ feature, too. Though this did make some changes in gmail I don’t quite understand (like centering everything). 

    love this product and your responsiveness and constant improvements!

  7. JH Saw
    March 13, 2008 4:21am

    i m using streamsend.com all the time… is the Campaign Monitor a better email marketing software?

    Mr JH Saw
    http://www.blastsg.com

Comments for this entry are closed.

Browse the Blog

  1. Interviews & Buzz (110)
  2. New Features & Updates (150)
  3. Observations & Answers (153)
  4. Tips & Resources (293)

Explore the Email Gallery

@thisisnation Fire through a link and we'll check it out. ^DG

Follow us on Twitter