3 Things Learned about Email Marketing from Building a Newsletter Template

By Win Salyards, Senior Marketing Consultant at Heinz Marketing

I am not a web developer, email marketing specialist, or software engineer. I am a marketer with a tiny bit of knowledge of HTML and CSS, Marketo, and design. This past January, I was tasked with updating our newsletter template. Here are three things I have learned from that process: 

It’s so easy to improve your HTML/CSS skills

So many free resources can help teach you how to code or give you a few lines to paste to fix an issue. There is no excuse for you not to try your hand at something like this. Expanding your skills or gaining that little extra knowledge to help you communicate effectively with an engineering team has never been easier. 

Outlook sucks, and I also love Outlook

Revamping our newsletter template has made me aware of how painfully frustrating Outlook can be. It feels so clunky sometimes. Never presenting an email correctly because of compatibility problems (get with the program Microsoft) or making my banner images weird (ugh!) But I still love Outlook, especially since many of the issues I had while developing our newsletter came from newer accessibility features added to Outlook. 

Email compatibility is a pain

Each email “client” has its quirk with how it displays parts of emails. Compatibility was by far what I spent the most time on, and it also taught me just how vital a good email testing tool could be. There’s only so much you can accomplish by sending yourself Marketo or HubSpot tests. If you are sending regular batch email campaigns and don’t currently have a testing tool like Email on Acid, start looking for one today. Your life will be so much easier. 

Email has been around for a long time, and marketers will always find novel ways to overcomplicate things. So, if you’re starting to build your email marketing skills, take your time and don’t get too frustrated at the process. Happy sending.