(1) It will make you INSTANTLY stand out in a sea of the same ol’ same ol’ graphics-heavy marketing emails.
(A great picture-by-picture comparison of how MUCH it actually makes you stand out is in my book in Blind Spot #4.)
(2) Your inbox delivery will improve because the Gmails/Yahoos/Outlooks… actually don’t like the use of images/graphics in emails and penalize your deliverability because of it.
(3) They’re heaps easier to send out in your email software, no messing around with 37 different overlays.
(Which also makes them much less of a logistical nightmare if you email daily.)
(4) As of the January 2025 iOS 18.3 update, images/graphics in emails started getting automatically blocked (unless users manually turned images back on but who turns them on willingly to look at more ads?). Plain-text has no such problems.
(5) Image/graphics-heavy emails are prone to breaking (i.e. showing incorrectly on your subscribers’ phones), whereas there are no such problems with plain-text.
(6) Plain-text is much less overwhelming on the reader’s eyes than are the usual 13 different protein powder, creatine and pre-workout pictures with a „Shop Now!“ button under them – hence you’ll get more email engagement and, as a result, probably more sales too.
(7) It’s unique, innovative and fresh – name ONE competitor you know that actually sends plain-text marketing emails?
(8) As a corollary to the previous point, this is bound to net you more attention/eyeballs/traffic – likely more sales too if you play your cards right.
(9) It’s satisfying to write.
(10) Plain-text feels HEAPS more personal than the standard graphics-heavy email. And I don’t need to tell you how you can never have enough personalization in your marketing…
(11) It allows you to use the power of word-painting, and therefore come across as more persuasive!
(This isn’t intuitive but in a lot of cases, words are more powerful than images. An image delivers a fixed, high-bandwidth snapshot to the visual cortex. Words must be reconstructed by the brain – and human imagination can greatly exceed raw human perception.)
(12) I can’t prove this, but plain-text emails just feel more trustworthy.
I could probably do a few more, but I figured since today is the 12th of February… I might as well make it 12.
(And also because my hands/fingers are tired – I wrote quite a few emails today.)
I know there’s a lot of resistance to the ‘humble’ plain-text email approach in this industry – hopefully this email showed you how a lot of that resistance is unsubstantiated and holds very little water.
I blame the darn ESPs – they’re the ones who constantly push their pretty-poster style graphics-heavy templates on everyone.
(Even though, ironically, they themselves say how „Taking an image-heavy approach to email design can impact inbox placement. Spam filters are also suspicious of emails composed mostly of images.“ That’s taken directly from Klaviyo’s website.)
So the best way to stick it to the ESPs (and stand out, get better inbox delivery, higher engagement, and potentially make more moolah)?
[Part of this email’s content has been removed from this Email Echoes version of it.]
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I send an email every day on just some of the strategies and systems needed to give your current & potential customers – on your email newsletter – an experience SO GOOD that they’ll simply refuse to buy supplements from anyone else afterwards. And if you subscribe to my daily newsletter you’ll also get my Book for Free: “Emails Without Bite: The 7 Email Marketing Blind Spots Your Sports Nutrition Brand May Be Heftily Paying For“ as a welcome gift for hopping on board.