Email Marketing has been there since long, and it is still doing great for every type of business owners. From e-commerce to small business owners, Email Marketing becomes the primary marketing tactics to engage with the customers, and sell products to them.

The most important thing about email marketing is the email list, and the second most important thing is writing emails. Your email must be engaging, direct to point, and it has something that directly connects to the subscriber.

HTML format emails are popular as they look tempting due to having the graphics, different font colors, and styles, etc.  These all make the email more professional, and tempting.

Where there are benefits, there are downsides too. HTML format emails at times may land in the spam folder of the mailbox. There is no guarantee if the email goes to inbox. The second problem is, since there are different email services available such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc., many times the CSS code of your email may break, and email looks horrible.

To cope up with these problems, Plain Text Emails are the way in which you don’t insert images and a lot of styles.  You just write an email in text form and send to your list. Almost 100% delivery is guaranteed, and there is no issue of the email display in different email services. Since everything is text; they look fine everywhere.

Plain Text Emails don’t include any images, gifs, bells, whistles icons, or anything. It includes only the content. Just plain text content.

Image Source: Campaignmonitor

What are the benefits of Plain Text Emails?

There are numerous benefits of Plain Text Emails which are as:

1. Subscribers Prefer them

The best thing about plain text email is the users prefer them over those fancy looking HTML emails. They prefer to reply to text emails over those HTML email. However, it doesn’t mean that HTML emails are waste. No, they surely not.

Different users have different viewpoints.  Some of them like plain text emails whereas some like HTML emails due to their visual appeal.

But, it is observed that most of the users prefer plain text emails as they are easily readable to them.

2. They Fit well with Latest Technologies

Due to a number of differently sized devices, it is quite difficult for HTML designers to design emails that open perfectly well on every device. Sometimes, things go right, but most of the times, it takes a lot of time to fix the email well for every device. But, such problem is not there when you send plain text emails.

Also, nowadays Smartwatches are being used, and I am not sure even if you think of reading an HTML email over it. But, plain text emails are easily readable in Smartwatches as well.

3. Ensures Delivery

There are chances to have broken links and tags in HTML which make them land in the spam folder of the mailboxes. It is difficult to ensure the delivery of HTML based emails.

But, when you send Plain text emails, you don’t have to worry as there is nothing like broken links, tags, images or anything. They ensure delivery. They don’t trigger any spam filters, and thus, they don’t land there in spam.

When you send HTML emails, and they land of spam folder of many mailboxes, it affects your open rate and CTR as well.
The foremost goal of sending email is to make users open the email but when the email will land in spam then how your open rate will be good. That is the reason; plain text emails are becoming popular as they mostly land in the inbox. Thus, open rate increases and further CTR is quite good as well.

So, these are a few things that make plain text emails more converting. If you think you have a list in which some subscribers are more prefer HTML emails, and some prefer plain text emails, you can make use of Multipart MIME.

What is Multipart MIME?

MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension. Multipart MIME is a process that sends out your emails in both formats HTML and Plain text. This process sends HTML email to those who can view HTML content, and sends plain text emails to those who cannot view HTML emails. Plain text emails are also sent to those who have opted out for HTML emails.

So, in this process, you don’t have to choose any one version over another. You just have to create both and include in your email marketing strategy. It will automatically send both formats to different users as per their preference and email servers.

Final Words

Both versions of email are important, and you should not choose one over another rather make use of Multipart MIME to make your email marketing campaign more effective. Both have their own pros and cons.

If you ask me as a user, I prefer plain text emails.