The Text Version Nobody Checks

The other half of every newsletter

A designed newsletter is really two messages sent together. One has the layout, colours and pictures. The other is plain text, for any program or reader that will not show the first.

Mailing services create the text version automatically from the design when the campaign is saved or sent.

Almost nobody reads it before it goes. Many owners do not know it exists, because their own email program always shows the designed one.

Some of their readers see nothing else.

Who sees the text version

• Readers who prefer plain text and set their email program to show it.
• Some workplaces that display all incoming mail as text.
• Older phones and devices with limited email programs.
• Anyone replying, whose program may quote the text version back.
• Spam filters, which read and compare both versions.

The fifth affects everyone on the list. Filters look at whether the text version resembles the designed one, and a text version that is mostly links and file names looks like the mail they are built to catch.

What the generator produces

The software turns the design into text by stripping out the layout and keeping whatever words and addresses are left, in the order they appear in the code.

The results are familiar to anyone who has looked. Every link is written out in full, and each one has been wrapped in the service's tracking address, which can run past a hundred characters.

Images become file names or bracketed descriptions. Navigation, social icons and the footer appear as lists of words, each followed by a long address.

Columns are flattened into one, so a price can end up several lines away from the product it belongs to.

When the message was in a picture

The worst case is a newsletter whose main message is an image: a banner with the offer, the dates and the price written into it.

The text version keeps only the image's file name or its alternative text. If that says banner-final-2.jpg, the reader learns nothing at all.

The same newsletter also fails readers whose email program holds back images until they choose to load them, as many office programs do by default.

Putting the key facts in real text in the design fixes both problems at once.

A worked example

A dog agility club trains on a fenced field at the edge of town, and emails members and past students about class sign-ups, trials and weekend seminars.

One spring newsletter was a single image: a flyer giving the dates, fees and registration time for summer classes, with a button underneath.

A longtime member replied to ask when registration opened. Her reply quoted the newsletter back, showing what her program had received: view this email in your browser, an image file name and a link three lines long.

The volunteer who sent it had never seen the text version. It contained no dates, no fees and no registration time.

The next newsletter carried the dates, fees and opening time in real text at the top of the design.

The volunteer also rewrote the text version by hand: the same facts in the first five lines, then one short link to the registration page.

Finding the text version

Most mailing services have a plain-text tab or step in the campaign editor. It usually sits one click from the send button, and it is easy to skip.

To see what actually arrives, send a test to yourself. In Gmail on a computer, the option to show the original message displays both versions as they were sent.

Read it the way a text-only reader would: from the top, without the design to guide you.

Check it again after any change to the design, since the two versions drift apart easily.

Tidying it

Put the message first. Whatever the newsletter is for, whether an offer, a date or a change of hours, belongs in the first few lines, before any navigation.

Cut the clutter of links down to the one or two that matter, each on its own line after a short label.

Delete image file names, empty brackets and the list of social networks.

Where there are several stories, give each a heading in capitals, a line or two of text and its own link, in the same order as the design.

Plain text has no bold, so capitals and blank lines do that work.

Keep it short. Nobody reading plain text wants the whole design described to them.

What must stay

The text version is still a commercial email under CASL, so it needs the same identification as the designed one: the business's name, a mailing address and a working way to unsubscribe.

When tidying, leave the unsubscribe link and the address in place, and check that the link still works from the text version.

Opens that are never counted

Mailing services count an open when a tiny image in the designed version loads. A reader who sees only the text version never loads it.

So text readers can appear in reports as people who never open anything, unless they click a link. Clicks still count, because the tracking addresses work in both versions.

That is one more reason not to drop subscribers simply because their opens show zero.

The counter-case

For many lists the text version reaches very few human readers, and a newsletter written mostly in real text produces a readable one with little effort.

A business sending one short newsletter a month may only need to glance at it, fix the first lines and move on.

But spam filters read it for every recipient, and the readers who depend on it get nothing else. Read the text version before every send, and tidy it whenever the design changes.

Before the next send

1. Open the plain-text tab in your mailing service.
2. Put the key facts in the first lines.
3. Cut the image names and empty brackets.
4. Keep one or two links with short labels.
5. Check the address and unsubscribe are still there.
6. Edit the text version last, after the design.
7. Send a test and read the original.

Step six matters because some services can rebuild the text version when the design is edited afterwards, quietly discarding the changes made by hand.

The mailing address the text version still has to carry is covered in a home address at the bottom of every newsletter.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.