HTML Email Templates: 4 Coding Tips for Emails

Free HTML email templates are a boon to the cost-conscious email marketers and can for absolutely no cost, actually end up making a lot of money from the use of these templates. This is more of an end objective rather than a complete reality because as the saying goes, “nothing is for free.” Coding issues abound in most of the free offerings that are out there on the internet and you really have to review some of the codes used in these templates before you choose them. However, assuming that you have the templates that you really want, your next step is to try and test the limits of what these templates are made of by using them in some trying situations. Here are four things that you need to keep in mind, with respect to HTML code.

1.       Css. This is quite a tricky one. Css is a cascading style sheet and was invented to take some of the repetitiveness out of HTML and xml coding by being a single point file that could be called from the main file whenever needed. This would sound like a very good arrangement especially considering how problematic HTML can be with formatting codes; however, how do you send a css file in an email. This is fundamentally the problem with css in the email environment. There is no way out of this fix either. You cannot even resort to calling a css file from an online server because some email clients block downloads. This being the case, you should always make two copies and or take the safe way out and code your free HTML email template the way it was before css.

2.       White space. This is a problem that should occur rarely because your content should be adequate enough to fill up any and all space in your email. However, there are some odd instances where you would end up with a sizeable amount of white space with nothing to put there. Do not make the mistake of trying to put a downloadable image in any white space because you cannot be absolutely sure that you are not going to encounter an email client that will block downloads. Therefore, use colors instead like black to mask these out.

3.       Review. This would seem obvious but it is not uncommon to encounter problems in code like incorrectly pointing links and images being called from a local server instead of an http server.

4.       Emphasis. Free HTML email templates sometime come with atrocious options for emphasis in text. These loud emphases that are placed in text can sometimes be perceived as spam and therefore, you should avoid overusing boldface formatting and never use colors when trying to emphasize a point. Truth be told, you should not have to emphasize anything in your email as the power of copywriting should be able to take care of giving the appropriate impetus to an important piece of text.