’Shrinking Real Estate’ in Yahoo! Mail Beta and Other Web-Based Clients Makes Smaller B-to-C Message Design Essential

MENLO PARK, Calif.--EmailLabs (www.emaillabs.com), the leader in high-performance email marketing solutions and a subsidiary of J.L. Halsey Corporation (OTCBB:JLHY), today announced that it is advising business-to-consumer marketers to reduce template size to account for smaller viewing areas in Web-based email clients.

The newest releases of two popular tools, Yahoo! Mail Beta and Microsoft's Window Live Mail Beta, now enable preview panes by default. These much-smaller reading spaces enable consumers to quickly scan their messages before opening them – and force marketers to make their points within the first few inches of their messages.

Due to widespread adoption of Microsoft Outlook’s preview-pane function in corporate settings, B-to-B marketers have been dealing with this design challenge for some time. Not so for B-to-C marketers, who until now could safely assume that most consumers would see their entire emails as designed.

“B-to-C marketers who want big results had better start thinking small,” said Stefan Pollard, director of consulting services, EmailLabs. “Many are completely unaware that preview panes and automatically blocked images can make their current design templates virtually unreadable. If they were to use a third-party rendering tool to actually test how their emails look in consumers’ inboxes, they might be shocked.”

Even when messages are viewed in a full window, shrinking real estate can still be a factor. Many email clients now serve display ads on the right-hand side of the screen – and take that space away from the message window.

Marketers can improve readability by:

• Putting the most important call to action or the table of contents in the upper left-hand corner, so it can be seen in either horizontal or vertical preview panes.
• Making sure the most important call to action is spelled out in text and above the new fold line, not just encapsulated within an attractive image. Many email programs automatically disable all images in the preview pane – leaving a big red X or an empty space where the main idea should be.
• Adding text-based email navigation in case images are automatically blocked. For example, instead of relying solely on a “Shop Now” button that may never be seen (or clicked), also add a “Shop Now” text link.
• Reducing the size of masthead images and logos – or changing their placement -- so that more of the upper-left corner is devoted to driving desired actions.

See the table below for a summary of how each Web-based email client deploys settings that affect template design. For additional design tips and best practices, marketers can visit EmailLabs’ resource center or download its HTML Email Guide.

About EmailLabs

EmailLabs is a leading provider of high-performance email marketing solutions to agencies, publishers and marketing departments of middle-market and Global 2000 companies. The EmailLabs email marketing platform is provided as an ASP (Web-based) service, and is easily integrated with a company's Web site, sales force automation and CRM technologies through EmailLabs' application programming interface (API). For the fourth consecutive year, EmailLabs has been recognized by ASPnews.com as one of the Top 50 ASPs worldwide and as a Top 25 Service Provider for the Software-as-a Service (SaaS) and Business Service Provider category. The company provides email marketing solutions to more than 550 companies, including Nokia, Agilent, PalmSource and Jupitermedia. Headquartered in Menlo Park, Calif., EmailLabs was founded in 1999 and is a subsidiary of J.L. Halsey Corporation (OTCBB:JLHY). For more information, visit www.EmailLabs.com.