Many people use HTML emails with images and colorful templates and headers and footers. Their newsletters look like an actual newsletter or magazine. Very professional.

Most of the top marketers, however, use plain text. I do too.

Why? Because plain text emails get a better response.

Email is (or should be) a personal communication. From me, to you. Like I fired up gmail and sent you a personal email.

Even if it’s a newsletter.

For five years, I wrote The Attorney Marketing Letter, a paid subscription eight-page newsletter mailed in a number ten envelope. It was printed on letterhead with the name and address at the top. The paragraphs were indented and the margins were “right-ragged,” not justified. I used Courrier for the font. Each letter began with a salutation, “Dear _____,”.

Just like a real letter.

Today, I try to simulate the affect of a real letter by using all text emails. I don’t use HTML because I don’t want slick and professional. It looks nice but I don’t care about that, I care about communicating with my subscribers and I care about response.

People don’t want slick. They get enough magazines. Their mailboxes are filled with junk mail. If your newsletter looks like it was produced by a graphic artist and a team of copy writers, it is mentally lumped in with all the other commercial messages that flood their mailbox and is deleted with the rest of the junk mail or skimmed and then deleted.

People like getting real letters from real people, and they read them. There’s nothing more important.

You may have great content in your newsletter but you can’t build a relationship with (or sell something to) subscribers who don’t read it.

There’s another reason why plain text emails are important: smart phones. More and more people check email on the little screen in their pocket. They can sometimes read it if its HTML; they can always read it when its plain text.

“But plain text is ugly!”

“Maybe so, but the money it produces is beautiful.”