Inbox Insider: Rendering is key to seeing an e-mail campaign through

E-mail marketing is a great tool for brands to communicate with consumers, ideally. If an e-mail is not rendered properly, a marketer can lose the opportunity to communicate. After all, getting a consumer to open an e-mail is the first step. If they open it and can't see it, then they will probably lose interest.

While it is nothing new, e-mail rendering is still an issue.Today I got three marketing e-mails with rich media and colorful imagery, what I'm assuming is done with HTML. One e-mail came from Virgin America, one fromTablet Hotels and one from Bloomingdales.

The e-mail from Virgin America was bright and colorful withlots of different color and an attention to design. The e-mail from Tablet Hotels also was colorful and included images. The e-mail from Bloomingdale's was a giant black square with a few lines of text at the bottom. Because I imagined that this was not the e-mail that they had intended to send, I clicked on the “Having problems, viewing this e-mail link,” to find a catalog-looking photo of sandals on sale with lots of color, design and imagery.

Sadly this e-mail, which — once I got to it — was very well-designed, was not well-formatted. It took three steps to get to the intended message — which is a shame, as the more work a marketer makes for a customer, the more likely they are to give up. E-mail marketers who spend so much time on the design, execution and targeting of their message also should ensure that it is delivered and renders properly, or all that work could go for nothing.