A plain-text email manifesto from a self-confessed supremacist.

Mark Twain grew to hate slavery and those who supported it, but his mother – whom he loved and knew as a sweet and wonderful person – grew up a participant in the system.

How did he square these two contradictions?

He reflected:

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Kind-hearted and compassionate as she was, I think she was not conscious that slavery was a bald, grotesque, and unwarranted usurpation. As far as her experience went, the wise, the good and the holy were unanimous in the belief that slavery was right, righteous, sacred, the peculiar pet of the Deity, and a condition which the slave himself ought to be daily and nightly thankful for.

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In other words:

She was taught to see slavery as something other than what it was – the church, the government, her parents, and her neighbours had all told her it was right. 

And like most people?

She found it easier to accept what everyone around her believed…

…than to question it for herself.

Not much has changed since the 19th century.

Yes, slavery is now abolished…

…but people still seldom question things around them.

Take the industry-standard graphics-heavy approach to email marketing:

No one really knows exactly why an email “has” to be pretty-poster-like – full of fancy graphics.

It’s just done because “that’s the way things are done”.

In reality?

• The use of HTML graphics does a number on your deliverability – you’re that much more likely to end up in the spam/promo tab.

(As most supplement brands do – at least from what I’ve seen in 9 years in this space.)

• The fact that 99% of your competition also takes the graphics-heavy approach nukes your differentiation.

(i.e. if everyone’s doing the same thing… nobody is standing out – no one is that red apple in a crate of green ones.)

• A lot of people have the remote-image loading feature turned off by default to protect themselves from unsolicited spam, pornos, viruses, etc. – so that pretty graphics-heavy email your artsy-fartsy fingers worked so hard to compose can’t even be seen by some of your customers.

Even Steve Jobs once remarked on this unexamined orthodoxy:

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Throughout the years in business, I found something: I always ask why you do things. The answers you invariably get is, ‘That’s just the way it’s done.‘ Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks about things very deeply in business; that’s what I found.

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One of my readers once called me – largely in jest – a “plain-text email supremacist”.

And he’s right:

I am a plain-text email supremacist.

But NOT because I’m ideological about it.

NOT because I derive some form of pleasure from the graphics-heavy email approach being absolutely… well…

A dogshit approach.

I run with plain-text emails because they simply work better.

If it were the opposite case?

If plain-text emails were the ones that tumbled your deliverability… that destroyed your differentiation… and that some of your customers getting the email couldn’t even read it in the first place?

Then I absolutely would roll with the graphics-heavy approach.

But that’s not the reality as it is.

I don’t care about being right, I truly don’t – I only care about success.

And part of success is doing the right thing.

And the right thing when it comes to the design side of emails?

(For all the reasons stated above…)

Is going the plain-text route.

I’m very happy to change my mind.

Provided someone gives me a proper use-case for the HTML graphics-heavy approach.

“That’s just the way it’s done” is not one – it’s not even an argument since it’s a logical fallacy.

To quote the great American philosopher, Bill Maher:

“Be more skeptical.”

I know I certainly won’t change any minds by shouting this from a rooftop.

(Although I do sometimes feel like I’m screaming into the void and nobody/few listen.)

I know if I want to elevate someone’s thinking…

…I have to give them the truth so they see it for themselves.

And well?

The truth – behind the graphics-heavy VS plain-text email approach – has been given.

It’s yours to choose what you’ll do with it.

Will you continue on with “the way it’s just done” and keep landing in the spam/promo tab… hold zero profound differentiation… and have some of your customers stare at a blank, broken-looking email because your GIFs and graphics never loaded?

Or:

Will you join the black-text-on-white-background school of email design?

The choice is yours.

If it’s the latter?