[sims] Sending HTML emails

[Ecclesbury]

Hello all,

 

Apologies if this is a stupid question or if it has been answered before but hope it's a quick and easy answer.

 

Can Intouch send HTML based emails?

 

Are there any other products that will link to SIMS and send HTML based emails? Schoolcomms?

 

Much obliged.

[vikpaw]

Schoolcomms sends rich emails, i'm pretty sure they can be HTML. @Schoolcomms ?

Groupcall does too.

Not sure about InTouch.

[Ecclesbury]

Thanks VIkpaw,

 

I've actually had confirmation Capita that InTouch does support rich text, but they have uncovered my ignorance about the subject by asking me exactly what I mean by HTML emails (their actual question was 'do I mean the body of the email format, or the technical format of how the emails work')

 

As ever this stems from a vague request from SLT. I'm guessing they want to send the school bulletins as self contained emails rather than as PDF attachments (Which is what they do currently)

 

Any thoughts on that? Would InTouch or others support such a thing? Are there issues with accounting for different email providers?

[vikpaw]

Well text is easy enough, rich text will let you format it somewhat and give better layout. html will allow much better layout and let you recreate a pdf type look with inline pictures etc.

Creating true html emails is hard, and making sure it's seen the same by all is difficult. If you're happy with a simple save as web page, then it might work, but doesn't always look good.

You'd be better off, creating as a web page, and putting it on your website, then just sending a link to it.

I've spent hours creating a newsletter for the local business group, taking source data from Word, then trying to put it into a template. It's painful.

[vikpaw]

You could take a look at mailchimp, if nothing else, they have some good templates. If you set it up right, you could even track readership, but that's now going down a whole different road. Send Better Email | MailChimp

[N.B. That's the link from my account - so tracks to me, but i don't get anything as i'm on a free account anyway. If you did go for a paid plan, you'd get $30 credit though. You can find the same with a Google search. ]

[Schoolcomms]

Schoolcomms sends rich emails, i'm pretty sure they can be HTML. @Schoolcomms ?

 

You can but we do not recommend it, because however good your HTML the vast array of email clients that parents might be using on devices with different screen sizes means that you can never be sure how it will actually appear for parents. To be confident about how it will appear you are much better off attaching it as a PDF or MS office document. Some schools also put a plain text version of the words in the email body for quick consumption on a mobile handset (you should expect >30% of parents to consume your emails on a mobile device, for some areas it is more like >70%).