More and more people these days are signing up to online services and creating accounts on various websites on the web. It’s something that is becoming increasingly easier to do with integration of account linking services such as Facebook, Gmail and OpenID.
Registration emails tend to be your first offsite interaction with the user. For this reason it’s best to do everything you can to ensure you positively capture their attention.
Look and feel
Now it stands to reason that the best way to capture a user’s attention is with a pretty design and relevant content. Most of the time this is achieved through an assortment of images within a predefined layout. Something that is largely overlooked though, is how this will look when the email client automatically strips the images from the email. Email clients do this as it can be used to track which emails have been opened, the email client is acting to protect the user’s privacy. This can lead to a nasty looking layout filled with broken images. If you are going to head down the road of an image heavy email layout, make sure the layout still has some sort of visual appeal and integrity if they don’t display.
Content
Usually the primary goal of these registration emails is to confirm the user in question actually owns the email address given. This is normally done through a link presented to the user in the email which they must click to confirm their account. Again, these links can sometimes be disabled by the email client for the protection of the user. For this reason it is recommended that a link is provided in hyperlink form for ease of use, and a link which can be copy/pasted into the web browser’s address bar.
One thing which some websites insist on doing is emailing you your password back to you in plain text. Now in terms of security that is a big no no! If the email account is compromised they malicious user could easily find one of the user’s passwords that they use on your website, and maybe many more.
Another reason why this is off putting for me is that it makes me wary of the websites other security principles. If they are willing to send me an email containing my password how secure are their other procedures? Do they store my password in plain text?
Wording
The best thing you can do is optimise your registration email so that it does not trigger any of the obvious spam filter settings. The working of the subject and the content of the email can go a long way to ensuring you do or do not end up in the spam folder.
Lists such as this (to be used as a guide, I cannot vouch for its accuracy!) can give you a general idea of what to avoid. Terms such as Viagra will pretty much guarantee you’ll end up in the spam folder, along with words such as Free, Offer or winner.
So there you have it, a few things that can help you improve the overall look and feel of a registration email. It’s safe to assume that most first time emails you send to a user will be marked as spam and/or will be in some way malformed to have the images stripped from it. Don’t let it catch you out, make sure your emails are prepared!
