AM Inbox: Safeguarding against image alignment issues
The Retail Email Blog monitors the email marketing campaigns of more than 100 top online retailers. Here are highlights from my inbox this morning:
Wal-Mart, 7/13 — Save on Summer Essentials: Grills, Patio Furniture and More
I’ve been letting a lot of oopsies pass by without comment lately, but when I received two emails with image alignment issues in one day, it was a bit much to let slide. This Wal-Mart email has a break between the two sections of this image. I’m not a coding expert, but it’s likely the results of not using in-line CSS coding. If you’re not using a rendering tool, it’s a good idea to set up test accounts at the major ISP and send test versions of your emails to those accounts before sending them to your list. That way you can see any rendering issues that you may have missed.
Cooking.com, 7/13 — Quick Recipes for Shrimp, Crab Cakes + Sustainable Seafood
And this Cooking.com email had image alignment issues in two spots.
SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER: Select noteworthy subject lines
Hanna Andersson, 7/13 — School Deals Savings On Livable Leggings And More!
Finish Line, 7/13 — GO! Lance GO!
Ralph Lauren, 7/13 — Discover Ralph Lauren's Official 2009 US Open Attire
Neiman Marcus, 7/13 — Fall Preview: The color of the season
Ann Taylor, 7/13 — The Trench Dress: An Instant Best-Seller (Get Yours Before It's Gone)
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SEARCH... By Post Category / By Selling Season / By Retailer / By Topic / Monthly Archive
Wal-Mart, 7/13 — Save on Summer Essentials: Grills, Patio Furniture and More
I’ve been letting a lot of oopsies pass by without comment lately, but when I received two emails with image alignment issues in one day, it was a bit much to let slide. This Wal-Mart email has a break between the two sections of this image. I’m not a coding expert, but it’s likely the results of not using in-line CSS coding. If you’re not using a rendering tool, it’s a good idea to set up test accounts at the major ISP and send test versions of your emails to those accounts before sending them to your list. That way you can see any rendering issues that you may have missed.
Cooking.com, 7/13 — Quick Recipes for Shrimp, Crab Cakes + Sustainable Seafood
And this Cooking.com email had image alignment issues in two spots.
SUBJECTIVITY SCANNER: Select noteworthy subject lines
Hanna Andersson, 7/13 — School Deals Savings On Livable Leggings And More!
Finish Line, 7/13 — GO! Lance GO!
Ralph Lauren, 7/13 — Discover Ralph Lauren's Official 2009 US Open Attire
Neiman Marcus, 7/13 — Fall Preview: The color of the season
Ann Taylor, 7/13 — The Trench Dress: An Instant Best-Seller (Get Yours Before It's Gone)
_____________________
SEARCH... By Post Category / By Selling Season / By Retailer / By Topic / Monthly Archive
Labels: AM Inbox, Coding Issues, Cooking.com, Oopsy, Rendering, Wal-Mart
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posted at 9:56 AM by Chad White
I love Smith-Harmon's enthusiasm. It's so great to have a connection with people who really "get" and get excited by email marketing. (Truly, there are not that many of us out there!) I count myself very lucky to have found such accomplished enthusiasts to collaborate with on the REI program. They are helping to bring amazing opportunities to fruition with panache.
4 Comments:
Not sure it's a CSS issue, usually cause by HTML.
Although, it's strictly the rendering engine causing the issue. I've seen this caused by line breaks in code. When coding, it's often best practise to ensure everything is indented and carriage returned so that it's easy to read the HTML on a human-readable basis.
However some rendering engines, for whatever odd reason, sometime add padding to these line breaks on the screen when it is running through the code.
It's something that's not always noticeable without a large amount of render testing; so that's the lesson here, test your emails!
Thanks for chiming in, Jake. Yes, you can definitely experience problems if your coding isn't in-line (no line breaks) in some email clients.
There's also a quirk in gmail that puts a break around images (regardless of whether or not there are line breaks in the code) unless you include style="display:block" within the img tag.
Thanks, Michelle. I should probably get Smith-Harmon's coding team to chime in next time. They know all the tricks.
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