How To Design Plain Text Emails: 9 Useful Tips

While most people use email programs that allow for HTML, some people are restricted to receiving emails in plain-text format. Also, some email services default to the plain-text version of an email.

Email Transit put together nine tips on how to design effective plain text emails and they’re included below:

1. Space out the sections of your message roughly equivalent to the html-based design. If there are logical breaks in your html email, make those same breaks in the plain text version.
2. Use underscores to divide sections of an email into logical pieces. Also use underscores to denote section titles or headlines.
3. Keep headlines to 50 characters or less per line.
4. Keep body copy to 70 characters or less per line. If your sentence is too long, make logical breaks to force a new line and avoid potential left to right scrolling issues.
5. If you have an ‘In this Issue’ section in your HTML message, put the title of the email at the top of the plain text version, followed by the ‘In this Issue’ content and finally, your message.
6. Add a leading http:// to all web addresses that don’t already feature it. This will oftentimes make the link clickable in a plain text message in many email clients.
7. Replace HTML-based characters with plain text replacements (I.E. ® with (R), ™ with TM) .
8. Replace bullets with asterisks or other symbols.
9. Replace any hex codes for punctuation with their plain text equivalent. (I.E. & #8220; & #8221; would become “”).