HTML vs Text emails and deliverability

[Anonymous]

Alright, I know there is probably something on here about this, but I have as specific question.

If I send a well-crafted HTML email with a nice banner and CTA button along with the plain-text version (as is best practice), is it best practice to send a different version of the text-based email?

Example:

From: marketing@email.mycompany.io

HTML

:: BANNER ::

Some text here.

Click Here (linking to a landing page. Link masked)

Some text here.

TEXT

Some text here

Click Here <pages.mycompany.com/xxxxxxxxxx>

Some text here.

Those two are the same, however, in order to reconcile the different domains, can one alter the text email to not have a call to action like that. Maybe without the link. The assumption I am making is that servers will not look too kindly on the different domains being displayed by the sender and the link.

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Also, be patient. I am very new to the technical side of deliverability. I am trying to wrap my head around all the moving parts. Thanks!

[SanfordWhiteman]

Like Josh, I'm not clear on why you think your HTML and text parts will (or should) have different domains. Unless there's a specific need to leave a link untracked, it will bounce off the tracking domain, regardless of which part of a multipart email it appears in.

But a very short text part with a different CTA would be fine in any case. Text parts can be used to "stuff" normal text into a malicious email in an attempt to throw off content analysis, but if you're not doing that, don't worry.

I think Emily's point is great: you can't measure impressions for non-image-enabled messages, so having different successes just makes for more confusion.

[Anonymous]

Josh Hill​

Thanks for the responses!

Sorry for the confusion. I don't think that the URLs will be different. What I am asking is if the sender domain and the links in the body contain a different domain, do servers look down on this? email.mycompany.io (sender) and pages.mycompany.com (asset). According to our IT department, those need to reconciled. Would look like, email.mycompany.io (sender) and pages.mycompany.io (assets). They said this could be a problem. However, I don't see how.

Let me know.

[Josh_Hill13]

I would generally ensure that your main domains are the same to avoid the penalty:

info.mycompany.com

go.mycompany.com

your example may incur a small penalty. If you are really interested, spamassassin posted 200 variables and this was one of them.

Security relies primarily on consistency so the more you can do that, the less you will trigger warnings.

[Anonymous]

These are good points. I appreciate the replies. I think that what Sanford Whiteman​ is saying makes a lot sense. Especially with the multiple branded domains. Also, the reason why I agree with "This will not be a problem. It is, however, a classic misguided worry." is that we have seen the best deliverability we have ever seen.

And another point is that we have set up DMARC, DKIM, and SPF is configured correctly.

I mean what if I am linking to a Forbes article? email comes from email.mycompany.io and links to forbes.com/blog/

I don't see myself getting penalized because of my link to that is inconsistent with my branded domain.  

[SanfordWhiteman]

If you are really interested, spamassassin posted 200 variables and this was one of them

? This isn't in the default SA ruleset.

Also, anyone who sent from multiple domains via Marketo before a couple of months ago (when multiple branding domains were introduced) couldn't have conformed to this requirement.

[SanfordWhiteman]

email.mycompany.io (sender) and pages.mycompany.com (assets). They said this could be a problem.

This will not be a problem. It is, however, a classic misguided worry.

What they should be worrying about is getting DMARC, DKIM, and (to a degree) SPF set up correctly.

[Josh_Hill13 · Accepted solution]

Hi Franklin,

Do you mean that your HTML CTA URL and Text URL will somehow be different? Why would they be? Many spam servers will click the links to check that they resolve to a non blacklisted or malware location, so it will likely know that info.marketo.com tracking link matches your unwrapped link elsewhere.

However, your text URLs will get wrapped by Marketo, so not sure if this is really an issue for you.

I wouldn't be surprised if some servers look unkindly on html and text versions that have large inconsistencies.

[Anonymous]

I have zero insight on the deliverability due to a different domain on the sender and in the email. The hard part is that you have no idea who is getting text and who is getting HTML so I'm not sure how you would measure this. Do you notice low deliverability currently or recently?

[Anonymous]

Not recently. We have changed a lot of our practices. According to Marketo's email performance reports, we see on average 97%+ deliverability. This is true for both large and small sends.

[Anonymous]

Wow, good delivery numbers!