HTML vs Text Newsletters

One of the first choices you need to make about your WordPress newsletter is what format to use – HTML or text-only. This is a huge dilemma because both HTML and text-only have their big pros and cons. In a sense, it is like choosing a car or a bicycle – in some situations one of them is the better choice, in other it is the other way round. While I can’t make the decision for you, here are some considerations to bear in mind when weighing the pros and cons of HTML and text newsletters.

Pros and Cons of Text-only Newsletters

Text-only newsletters are simple and convenient and this is why they are still popular. Here are some of their advantages:

• Easier to prepare. When you don’t have to deal with HTML formatting, it takes almost half the time and effort to prepare the daily/weekly/monthly edition of your newsletter.
• Don’t scream ads. The modest look of plain text messages is everything but glossy. However, this is a huge advantage because when a user gets a glossy message, his or her first reaction is that it is ads and very often the message goes to trash right away.
• Don’t need a fancy template. You can make a simple proforma template (i.e. leave two lines between headings, use tabs for spacing, etc.) for your text-only template but this can’t be compared with the time you need to prepare a professional HTML template and to format your text according to it.

However, no matter how great text-only newsletters are, it is impossible not to notice some of their disadvantages:

• Very limited branding opportunities. The inability to use color and images in a text-only newsletter is bad from design point of view but for branding it is even worse because you can’t include a logo and other company imagery in a text newsletter.
• No hyperlinks. The inability to include hyperlinks is even worse than the inability to include images. Of course, you can include the URL of the hyperlink as a text but this means that a user has to copy the link and open it, which significantly decreases click through rates.
• Text-only newsletters are visually not attractive. For a tech user this might not be a huge problem but for a marketer visual appeal is very important. Users, too, prefer shiny colors and glossy pics.

Pros and Cons of HTML Newsletters

In comparison to text-only newsletters, HTML newsletters give you more power. Here are some of the ways in which HTML newsletters excel their plain text counterparts:

• You can use color and images to make them more attractive. The indisputable advantage of HTML newsletters is that they give you much more opportunities to design eye-appealing templates and to use pics to illustrate your point.
• You can brand them to reflect your company’s image. In a HTML newsletter you can use your company colors and you can include your company logo, thus increasing brand recognition.
• Tracking is easier. You can track text-only newsletters but the process is much easier with HTML ones. You can track open rates, click through rates, etc. and all these metrics are valuable to a marketer.

The downsides of HTML newsletters aren’t to be neglected, either. Here are some of the not so nice aspects of HTML newsletters:

• Not every user accepts them and there are email clients that can’t handle an HTML newsletter. Most of today’s email clients can handle an HTML newsletter but still there will always be users who can’t accept HTML newsletters or who because of various reasons (i.e. security, bandwidth, etc.) opt to receive a plain text version. Additionally, even if the rest of the HTML email is delivered, images are often blocked, so again you end with no images in your newsletter.
• Require more space and bandwidth. Disk space and bandwidth are relatively cheap but still you need to consider them as factors, especially for mobile users.
• Their creation takes more time and resources. All the nice-looking extras you can include in an HTML newsletter take time to prepare and if you are doing regular newsletters at short intervals (i.e. daily), the preparation time adds up.

There are other advantages and disadvantages to both types of newsletters but even this brief mention of the major ones should give you an idea which of them is better for you. The safest is to use both, though this takes more time and effort but the results might be worth. For instance, you can send HTML to your loyal readers because you know it won’t end in the spam folder. You can also send HTML and plain text and leave it to your users to choose what to receive.

If you are using WordPress, the easiest way to send both versions of your newsletter is to get Tribulant Newsletter – one of the best WordPress newsletter plugins . It can send both HTML and txt versions of your newsletter (or at least this is what its creators say), thus saving you the hassle to manually deal with the process.

Ada is the Blogger Relations Manager at WinkPress, which is a web resource about leveraging WordPress, its themes, and plugins to create versatile and unusual websites. Visit the site to learn more about WordPress newsletter plugins.