Should you use a WYSIWYG editor?

Using a WYSIWYG editor

In theory, WYSIWYG editors should save time, and provide non-technical users with a simple, intuitive way to create HTML email.

But the potential disadvantages could have a damaging effect on your brand and IP reputation.

• WYSIWYG editors often create HTML code that renders poorly in email, potentially impacting on your deliverability
• Unnecessary code is often added by WYSIWYG editors, making your emails take longer to load and more likely to be labelled as spam by ISPs.
• They limit your ability to be creative and restrict you to sending very simple emails

Why doesn't your WYSIWYG editor work as well for your emails as it does for your website?

Whether you are using a WYSIWYG editor that is built into your ESP, a web-based editor or a software-based package, chances are the software was developed to produce code for websites, not emails.

This means that they may not take into account the nuances specific to email. Style sheets, background images, tables and cells work well for websites but can cause rendering problems in email.

What does the code look like?

To demonstrate, here are some examples of code generated by WYSIWYG editors, compared to hand-coded HTML that is optimised for email.

This code on the right is taken from a WYSIWYG editor in a randomly selected ESP. To code the heading, the editor used 902 characters, where hand-coding would only use 182. This is just one heading - imagine the impact over a lengthy or complex email.

Additionally, code generated by WYSIWYG editors often renders inconsistently. The image on the left is the WYSIWYG preview - and the image on the right shows how that code rendered in Outlook 2007.

What if I don't have the resource to hand-code HTML?

Ideally, every marketer sending email would have access to specialist email HTML developers. Here at Alchemy Worx, because we focus entirely on email, we have a dedicated HTML team, plus we get real people to render-test every email we send in all the major browser and email client (account) combinations. This gives our team a constantly evolving understanding of what works and what doesn't, and how to work around the specific limitations of every major email client.

But we know not everyone has access to this kind of resource. If lack of HTML resource (internal or external) is the only factor preventing you from keeping in regular contact with your email subscribers, here are some tips on how to get the most out of WYSIWYG editors:

• Keep your content very simple.
• Limit amends by finalising the copy before setting it up in the editor.
• Build content in a rich-text editor like Wordpad. (Microsoft Word adds loads of other code which will unnecessarily add weight to the code, and may even break the layout.)
• Avoid using special characters (such as £, &, %...) which need additional code to render properly.
• Render-test your message manually in the email clients on your list - render-testing tools like Return Path are useful but may not always be 100% accurate.
• Use a hand-coded template, and keep your copy length exactly the same each time to give you the benefit of hand-coded HTML without the incremental cost of coding every email you send.

And last but not least:

Consider the real cost implications before deciding whether you can afford email HTML resource (internal or external). Taken together, the cost of the negative impact on your brand, compromised deliverability and wasted opportunities may well tip the balance.

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