The PRSA eblast was created by a print designer, and had to be heavily adapted and edited to work within the constraints of email code rendering. The original version had overlapping images and text wrapping around main image in the body of the email. Since these things aren’t possible, the simple solution would be to create it as an image and just send the image in an email. It would retain the exact design and style, but that method has some major flaws.
First of all, the width of the eblast has to be within a reasonable range so that the recipients don’t have to scroll around too much horizontally. That can cut interaction down by a huge percentage.
Second, the file size of an email made completely of images is a lot bigger than it should be, which causes long load times. Making a user wait for content is too much to ask for an eblast like this.
Third, spam filters can be an issue. Having a large email with very little text is a warning sign, because it’s a method often used by spammers to display words on screen that would usually get caught in filters as plain text. Emails should be weighted about 80% text and 20% images to be seen as legitimate.
With all of that in mind, I recreated the print document from scratch, using email-friendly fonts and sizes. I was able to create a table that carefully hid where all of the cell borders were so that the original design was retained as closely as possible. I used some programming tricks to use as few images as possible.