Tips for Plain-Text Email Formatting

General Questions Updated on April 8, 2022

Always include a plain-text alternative message with all your HTML emails that you send through Benchmark, because some people choose not to view HTML and would rather read text messages. Also, some anti-spam applications view an HTML email that’s sent without a plain-text alternative as “sloppy” and typical of spam, ending in your message being blocked. You can use our “COPY TEXT FROM HTML EMAIL” feature to create a text version of your HTML emails.

Here are some tips for creating your plain-text messages:

• Plain text is just black-and-white, single-width text. There are no stylizing, images, graphics or colors involved.
• Use something like Note Pad (free with windows) or Text Edit (free with Macs) to create the plain-text message.
• You have to provide the entire Web address instead of just hyperlinks in your text messages. Some email applications will automatically turn your Web addresses into clickable links, but others will not. It’s a good idea to indicate what the Web address does before providing the actual address. For instance, this means if you have a Web address that leads to your product page on your Website, put the text “view our products” right before the Web address so people know what will happen when they go to that page.
• Use our PREVIEW and TEST EMAIL feature to view the text version of your email.