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Pivotal Veracity debuts cross-platform email design guide

Email deliverability and optimization service Pivotal Veracity has launched the first online cross-platform email design guide for what works and what doesn't in major email client platforms.

The guide incorporates more than 6,000 design elements across most Web-based computer and mobile email clients.

"There is very little documented about what the capabilities are of traditional email clients such as Comcast.net, Yahoo, AOL and Outlook," said Deirdre Baird, president/CEO of Pivotal Veracity. "There is almost nothing documented about mobile email clients.

"With our Cross Platform Design Guide, we've jumped from a veritable black hole of information in terms of what works in mobile email clients to a rich mountain of information," she said.

The Phoenix-based company seeks to tackle the key problem that has long bedeviled email design: the lack of standardization and documentation in how emails render from one email client to another.

An online, fully indexed resource guide, the Pivotal Veracity product documents all aspects of HTML and CSS property and selector support for Web-based computer and mobile email clients nationwide and overseas.

The guide also includes characteristics about each email client such as image defaults, preview panes and form support.

In line online?
Here's how the cross-platform guide works.

Let's say the marketer is designing an email and wants to include a form such as a search button or a questionnaire. But the marketer is uncertain about which email client supports forms.

So, that marketer can look up "Forms" in the Pivotal Veracity guide and get information on the capabilities of each email client. The marketer can not only see if the email works in AOL or Yahoo, but also on the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry models or phones with Windows Mobile operating systems.

The guide also documents the capabilities for all CSS properties, both as internal style sheets as well as inline styles.

For example, if the email designer wants to know if the background color, font size, border or table works on the iPhone, she can look it up in the guide.

Once there, the designer will be able to determine whether the specs work as internal style sheets within the head as well as whether they work as inline styles within the body.

"The result of an email that isn't coded with an understanding of HTML capabilities and a specific mobile phone's rendering thereof can be devastating for the marketer as they realize their email hadn't worked," Ms. Baird said.

"Emails that look good on the Apple iPhone can look bad in Windows Mobile and outright unreadable on the BlackBerry," she said.

"Prior to now, designers were left in an endless game of cat and mouse, spending hours trying to figure out what about their HTML code was causing the problem, changing it, only to find out that their new code caused a problem in another email client.

"The Cross Platform Design Guide ends this game by providing the designers and marketers all the information they need regarding what they can and can't do."

Design, not resign
Essentially, what this guide is designed to do for email marketers and designers is eliminate the hit-or-miss, test and retest pattern that most email marketers currently use.

"Prior to now, one small Australian company has documented the capabilities of a handful of desktop and Web-based email clients across less than 100 design elements," Ms. Baird said.

"Our guide is the only one that covers every major Web-based and desktop email client as well as the only one that covers mobile email clients," she said. "Additionally, we cover platforms used in the U.S.A., Europe and Asia."

The design guide is included in Pivotal Veracity's eDesign Optimizer suite, which is designed to improve the performance and rendering of emails across Web, computer and mobile platforms.

All subscribers to eDesign Optimizer will have access to the online guide.

Pivotal Veracity clients include Borders, American Express, Cisco, Dow Jones, Oracle, SAP, Nestle, IBM, Ogilvy, Responsys, Silverpop, Yesmail, ExactTarget, Alterian, Axciom Digital, Digitas and Avenue A/Razorfish.

If marketers are designing emails without an understanding of the email clients their customers use to read emails, they run a tremendous risk of lost revenue and response, Ms. Baird said.

"For example, an image-rich email will perform terribly on a BlackBerry," Ms. Baird said. "An email design that is set up in multiple columns will lose its fluidity and layout on a Palm.

"The design guide empowers email designers with in-depth knowledge of exactly what design elements work on each platform so that they can design emails either for specific platforms or utilize those design elements that will work across platforms," she said.