Is a text version still needed?

[SLeeYVR]

Hello,

I've been continually formatting and including a text version for all our emails and was wondering if it's still needed. I found this old post and was wondering if it's still valid.

https://nation.marketo.com/t5/Product-Discussions/Text-Only-version-usage/m-p/78086#M43555

I'm wondering:

• Are you still formatting the text version?
• Are multi-variate emails still a thing?
• Do people still want a text version only?

Please share your thoughts.

Cheers!

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

It's absolutely still needed!

The only way to create a proper text version (rather than letting the mail client create a downsampled/guesstimated text version, which is wildly prone to error) is to include the text part.

Not enough people pay attention to the text part. It's a shame because your mission should be to convey the message clearly to all devices and readers.

[Michael_Florin]

Of course Sandford is right. And yes, you should also eat less meat and work out more!

(We're not doing it. Effort is too high. Marketo's autoconversion from HTML to Text is useless, so you'd really have to create TXT version templates of your HTML templates, or even manually make the text version of each email pretty. Nobody got time for that. But Sanford is still right!)

[SanfordWhiteman]

😛