{"id":62,"date":"2012-03-23T18:40:22","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T18:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/?p=62"},"modified":"2012-04-23T20:14:29","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T19:14:29","slug":"120-christian-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/120-christian-website.html","title":{"rendered":"120-christian-website"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Christian website newsletters<\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n

At Websites4Christians we get asked a lot about what works for a christian website newsletter.\u00a0 So I thought that I’d start off by writing a short technical note.\u00a0 This doesn’t focus on the detail of what to include in the Christian website newsletter but instead focuses on two important issues: images and fonts.\u00a0 I’ll write some more on the other issues over the next few weeks (see Christian website Pt 2<\/a>) but for now I wanted to focus on images in particular.<\/p>\n

Technical notes on writing a newsletter<\/h3>\n

Newsletters can be a powerful way of reaching your members and those interested in what you as an organisation are doing.\u00a0 However they can be tricky to get right technically.\u00a0 What will work for one person won\u2019t work for all.\u00a0 There are two technical aspects worth considering with email: Images and fonts.<\/p>\n

Images<\/h3>\n

Today there are lots and lots of email clients available for users.\u00a0 Some of them display images and some of them don\u2019t.\u00a0 It is possible for users to turn image display on but in practise many don\u2019t.\u00a0 The main clients on the web are:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Client<\/td>\nDefault image display<\/td>\nEstimated market share<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Yahoo<\/td>\nOn<\/td>\n16%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Windows Live<\/td>\nOff<\/td>\n2%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Gmail<\/td>\nOff<\/td>\n5%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Hot mail<\/td>\nOn<\/td>\n15%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Aol<\/td>\nOn<\/td>\n0.9%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n

Desktop clients have a similar spread of image displaying:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Client<\/td>\nDefault image display<\/td>\nEstimated market share<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Outlook 2007<\/td>\nOff<\/td>\n40%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Outlook 2003<\/td>\nOff<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Apple Mail<\/td>\nOn<\/td>\n8%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Thunderbird<\/td>\nOff<\/td>\n1%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Aol (desktop)<\/td>\nOff<\/td>\n0.35%<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n

In short image based emails are often unlikely to be successful.\u00a0 If your Christian website newsletter uses them you might find your readers aren’t reading them because they can’t see them! The images won\u2019t be displayed on a large number on email clients.\u00a0 An example of such a mail sent to the author (using Gmail):<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"newsletter1\"
\nAs you can see the impact of the mail is completely lost.\u00a0 The offers (four of them) are completely lost and the message fails to deliver.\u00a0 The mail should have looked like this:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"newsletter2\"
\nThis image looks great and could easily attract attention but without the images options switched on the message looks bare.
\nThe company have tried to overcome these difficulties by writing the mail in a way that overcomes the difficulties.\u00a0 They have put the offer in text not images and have tried to make it easy for the user to see what is being offered.
\nThe part that the company can\u2019t overcome is that over 60% of the ad area is an image and so it\u2019s not attractive to the reader.\u00a0 Generally they\u2019ll skip the mail.
\nBest practise for Christian website mailings remains to keep them image free or at least to reduce the dependence on images to get the point of the mailing across.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The easy way to test is to simply remove the images from the message and then see whether the message still comes across.
\nIf you\u2019re still keen on using images then a solution that is used more and more is to create a webpage on your Christian website with all the graphics etc. and have a link in the email to that page.\u00a0 The page is \u201chidden\u201d from normal Christian website users but available by clicking the link (note you could also make a feature of back issues of your Christian website newsletters – more content).<\/p>\n

Fonts<\/h3>\n

Fonts can make a mail look interesting and can help to set apart certain parts of the message.\u00a0 Unfortunately support for font types is very varied.\u00a0 Currently it is though that the following fonts are \u201csafe\u201d (that is will show on 99% of views):
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0‘Arial Black’, Gadget, sans-serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0‘Bookman Old Style’, serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Comic Sans MS’, cursive
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Courier, monospace
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0‘Courier New’, Courier, monospace
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Garamond, serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Georgia, serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Impact, Charcoal, sans-serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Lucida Console’, Monaco, monospace
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Lucida Sans Unicode’, ‘Lucida Grande’, sans-serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0MS Sans Serif’, Geneva, sans-serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0MS Serif’, ‘New York’, sans-serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Palatino Linotype’, ‘Book Antiqua’, Palatino, serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Symbol, sans-serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Times New Roman’, Times, serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Trebuchet MS’, Helvetica, sans-serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Webdings, sans-serif
\n\u2022\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Wingdings, ‘Zapf Dingbats’, sans-serif;
\nThese normally work as normal, bold, italic, underline and combinations of these type faces.
\nUsing other fonts may or may not be successful so avoiding them seems to be a sensible approach.\u00a0 It\u2019s also worth noting that many email programs will only show black text (including bold, italic, underline etc.) so using colour will not always work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So in summary for a Christian website remember to check your fonts will work and exclude images from the email.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christian website newsletters   At Websites4Christians we get asked a lot about what works for a christian website newsletter.\u00a0 So I thought that I’d start off by writing a short technical note.\u00a0 This doesn’t focus on the detail of what to include in the Christian website newsletter but instead focuses on two important issues: images […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websites4christians.com\/our-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}