The Great New Zealand Survey Emailing Specs

Last updated August 2009

Different email clients (e.g. Hotmail, Gmail) render emails in different ways which affects the way your creative is viewed and therefore the click-thru rate it achieves. The specifications below will ensure your creative renders as closely as possible to the original in all major email clients and you maximise the effectiveness of your EDM. These are not our specifications; they are the specifications of the major email clients.

Creatives that are not built to these specifications will still be delivered, however we cannot guarantee that the creative will render as a true copy of the original or that click-thru rates will be as high as normally expected.

The 4 Most Important Specifications	Reason
1. No padding or margins, this includes cellspacing and cellpadding	These need to be in the creative table structure, there are no shortcuts for formatting, Spacers.gif to be used in blank cells
2. Any CSS (cascading style sheets) must be in-line NOT linked or embedded	Gmail, Hotmail & Yahoo (among others) do not support linked or embedded CSS files. All styles, must be in-line, which the best method being to define all text within cell
3. No Background Images Background Color is okay as long as it is inside a table not a <div></div>	Outlook 07 and other email clients do not support. Table width=”100%” and creative placed inside table
4. No Bullets	Padding or Margins are not supported in all email clients, spacing for bullets are not consistent if used. Alternative images and table structure for bullets and text
The Other Important Specifications	Reason
The creative should be no wider than 530px	Emails wider than this means the recipient has to scroll left or right to read the email in some email clients
The creative must be in a table structure unless basic text and no structure required	<div></div> tags are not supported
HTML must be flat layer, No layers for example. No floating images, MAPs, JavaScript or Add-ins	Layered HTML, image maps and JavaScript are not supported by most common email clients
No Animated Images	Outlook 07 and others do not support
All images must be in gif or jpg formats (not png), and must be provided in a folder ready for uploading	Images not saved in the correct formats will not render correctly in some email clients
Images must be full images CANNOT be stretched using width and height	Outlook 07 does not stretch the image; this would be like using a background image
As per above, NO <DIV> s	Table structure is required, will not work in Outlook 2007, MSN and Gmail
CSS Style of "display:block" needs to be added to all images.	This is to make sure images display correctly across all email clients in firefox
Total file size of the email must be 15k or less excluding images	File sizes larger than this can take too long to open which means recipients are less likely to read the email
Any specific colors required must be provided in hexadecimal format	Hexadecimal format (#000000) is used by all common HTML browsers and clients to represent colors
If creative is supplied in Photoshop or fireworks format and uses non-standard fonts these must be supplied separately	If fonts are not supplied as a separate file these will be replaced by default fonts
A text version must be supplied in electronic editable format	Some email clients and some recipients disable html emails and deliver the text version instead. No text version also triggers a possible spam alert with some email clients
Creative should not be one image only, and any text should be editable	Many email clients block images unless the user downloads them. Text that is an image cannot be read, making the user less likely to download images and ultimately click-thru
Fonts will not render exactly in all email clients	Different email clients will render the same font slightly differently which is beyond our control. For example Outlook 2007 uses Microsoft Work to render fonts, which is a different font-set to web-based fonts
Up to 10 tracking links are allowed	We cannot track click thru rates if more than 10 tracking links are used in a creative

If email is not supplied to the above specifications we will take the following steps to optimise your email creative.

1. Your set-up and delivery fee includes up to 90 minutes of design work by our design department. We will attempt to make your email creative render as close as possible in all email clients.

2. We will send you a test email for your approval and access to our test accounts if required for you to approve the final version. Where creative is not rendering correctly we will attempt to identify the reasons from the above check-list.

3. If creative is not rendering exactly in all email clients you may:

a. Approve the campaign as is
b. Authorise us to make additional changes to the campaign to make it render more closely to the original in all email clients. Additional creative work will be charged at $ 75 per hour
c. Modify the creative yourself and re-supply to the above specifications. Where there is a delay in sending a campaign due to creative being supplied incorrectly we are happy to move send dates without penalty however you will be invoiced for the campaign based on the original send date.

Please note we require 48 hours to prepare and test creative. For creative supplied less than 48 hours in advance we will endeavour to test and send as per send date but reserve the right to move send date 48 hours from date creative is received.

The Great New Zealand Survey Emailing SpecsLast updated August 2009

The Great New Zealand Survey Emailing Specs

Last updated August 2009