Is anyone having issues with mail2 templates? We are having two problems:
(1) the preview doesn't always render what actually shows up in mailboxes (e.g., the three-column template shows up just fine in preview for outlook but disintegrates in outlook 13 so that people are getting a vertically stacked template instead of the horizontal three-column one that we've designed)
(2) when patrons try to forward an html email, SOMETIMES the template will completely disintegrate and show the full address of the links, photos, etc. -- a huge mess. This doesn't happen all the time, but often enough that we're nervous about asking people to forward these emails to their contacts/networks.
Our design firm took the mail2 template and customized it to our brand, but other than that it is the same template that mail2 provides. We've opened tickets with them but aren't really getting anywhere, even after having the design team and the mail2 support team talk to each other directly.
If you've encountered any template disintegration issues, let me know. Other than this issue, we've been really happy with mail2 (just switched over the summer, so we're still learning).
Thanks,
Sara Billmann, UMS
Hi Sara,
I don't know how much you know about mail templates but they are VERY tricky, and Outlook clients are notoriously difficult as their HTML rendering engine is very out of date and deals with emails in a very different way to other clients. How do your emails look in, say, Gmail? Or on iPhone?
You could try sending your templates to Litmus from the Mail2 testing area (http://litmus.com - there is a free trial) to get a full view of how they are displaying across a range of mobile, desktop and tablet email clients. Then check a recent campaign client report and see how many of your clients are actually using the specific email client to get a realistic idea of how *most* people are seeing your campaign.
I spent hours trying to get our campaign to look right in Outlook 2007 (which we use internally) only to find less than 50 people per campaign are using that client. Most of which would be in our office. Not great, but it did prevent me banging my head against the wall.
Mail2 really only support templates they have developed as they have been tested on various clients.
One tip that may help is making your images just a few pixels smaller than Mail2 suggests - I have had problems with Outlook rendering a stacked version of the template because of this. For example my thumbnails for the three column layout are set as 168px w x 172px h. Give it a try.
Cheers
David Geoffrey Hall