How To Make Your Plain Text Emails Hard to Read and Use

Posted by Justin Premick

plain textSometimes it’s good to step back from discussions like what’s new at Gmail and how to add an opt-in form to Facebook and just talk email marketing basics for a bit.

Today, let’s talk about email design. Specifically, plain text email design.

While creating plain text emails seems easy (and it is) there are things you can do to make your plain text emails more reader-friendly.

A recent email I received illustrates this well:

Evernote’s Plain Text Update

Here’s an email I received from the makers of software program Evernote:

Evernote Email Example
(Click image to see full-size)

Now, we could take the easy way out and say that Evernote should be sending HTML emails instead of plain text – so they could more easily present this information in the excellent way they do on their website and blog.

Instead, let’s focus instead on how Evernote could make it easier for subscribers to get the information they want out of this plain text email.

  • For the record, I don’t think this is a bad email overall. It has a great tone and a lot of good content in it. I just think that the format makes it hard for subscribers to use and appreciate that content.

Making This Plain Text Email Usable

While this email isn’t just one big continuous block of text, it does leave a few things to be desired%

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