Email design - best practice

It is advised to keep emails to a fixed width of no more than 600 pixels. This ensures that, in the majority of cases, the email can be viewed as intended across different email clients.

All Reapit emails must be a fixed width; they are sent via Microsoft Outlook which cannot send responsive email layouts that resize to fit the device the email is viewed on.

All images should be provided in JPEG or PNG format as these have the best compatibility in emails. For the majority of email clients, animated GIFs are not compatible, so should not be used.
If a property image does not have an image added, awaiting image is shown. The image below is the standard Reapit awaiting image; if you wish to have a custom awaiting image, please provide an image file with the required design.

Open

Video links can be included within emails but cannot be embedded within the email.

Fonts
Web-safe fonts should be selected to ensure the font is common on all computers, tablets and mobile phones so the email will be viewable as designed on all devices.

The table below shows a list of web-safe fonts:

Serif

Georgia
Palatino Linotype
Times New Roman

Sans-serif

Arial
Arial Black
Comic Sans MS
Impact
Lucida Sans Unicode
Tahoma
Trebuchet MS
Verdana

Monospace

Courier New
Lucida Console

Formatting Merged Text

Merged text can have formatting applied, including font type, size, colour and weight. Bullet points can also be added to property Attributes and the Accommodation Summary.

It is not possible to format text in different ways that is stored within one field in Reapit

Colours
Emails use RGB or hexadecimal values for all colours. Colours should be provided in one of these colour values only.

Subject Line & Preview Text
It is recommended that your company name is included within the email subject line; this is due to the from field containing the name of the sender, rather than the name of your company.

Preview text is a snippet of the email body, typically displayed next to the subject line in the subscriber’s inbox. This is generally the first line of the email but can be customised to show particular text where required.

Example subject and preview on an iPad:

Salutations
Emails, including applicant-to-property-match emails, that are sent to an individual can include the contact’s preferred salutation. The standard property-to-applicant-match email is sent with all matched applicants in the BCC field so therefore cannot include their name. However, if this is required, a personalised property-to-applicant-match email can be provided.

Signatures
Email signatures can be added into Reapit templates but are not always required, dependent on how Outlook and your email server are setup. If signatures are shown when writing a new message in Outlook they will not be automatically added to Reapit emails. Signatures which are added on the email exchange server, once the email is sent, will show on Reapit emails.
Signatures added on the exchange server which are over 600 pixels wide can cause formatting issues with some email clients as it is wider than the Reapit email. Some signature applications can be set up to not include the signature if an email contains certain words or phrases. If these are provided to Reapit they can be included in all emails.

Your IT Company will be able to provide you with details on how your email signatures are set up.

A disclaimer should be included on emails to give all parties a fair level of protection; this can be in the form of text or a link to a disclaimer page on your website. It is advised to have your own legal team write/review this.

Property links
Property links are merged from Reapit and added to the property address, photos and text links such as view online. If the Reapit property record is set to No internet advertising, the links will be masked.

To add the link to Reapit, a URL needs to be provided by your website provider. The format of the URL must be simple with few variables; for example, the property type (sales or lettings/rentals) and the Reapit reference. The property address cannot be included in the URL as there are too many variables which could make the link unreliable.

Example links:
Sales: http://www.example.com/properties/sales/RPT160008
Lettings/rentals: http://www.example.com/properties/lettings/RPT160028

If simple links are not available, the URL will need to be added into the Marketing screen for each property. If no link is added, the links on the email will go to your homepage.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics tags can be included on links to your website, allowing you to track the number of people that clickthrough from your Reapit emails to your website. To track the clickthroughs, Google Analytics must be installed on your website; your website provider will be able to tell you if this is currently set up.

These are the standard Google Analytics tags which are added to property links:

• Source: RPS

• Medium: email

• Campaign: Property Match

Unsubscribe Link
An unsubscribe link is available in Reapit HTML emails, allowing the recipient of a marketing email to opt out of future mailings. It is a legal requirement to give the recipient an option to unsubscribe from marketing email, it is therefore recommended that a link is included on all match emails, along with any other marketing emails you have in Reapit.

The standard Reapit unsubscribe link is located in the email template footer, as shown in the example below:

When selecting a standard link, an email is generated ready to send back to the user who sent the marketing email.

The source (email type) and date it was sent are included, along with the contact’s reference (not available on property-to-applicant match emails) are included in the response.

The appointment confirmation email should include the appointment type, the date and time the appointment starts along with the full property address, ensuring all parties know when and where they are meeting.

The following data is recommended for all property match templates to ensure all required information is shown and that the material produced meets legal requirements.

Address
Address lines 1, 2 & 3 plus the first part of the postcode are shown on match emails. Address line 4 is not shown, due to it normally showing the county; this is not required along with space usually being at a premium. Flat or House Name, number (No.) and full Postcode are also not shown; this is in an attempt to prevent applicants bypassing the agent and/or turning up at a property without arranging a viewing appointment.

Price
For sales properties, the price should be shown along with the price qualifier, e.g. Asking Price, Offers in the region of, Offers in excess of.
For lettings/rentals property, rent should be followed by the rent period, e.g. per week, per month or per annum; this can be shortened to PW, PCM and PA. 
Properties which are set as Price/Rent on application will have the price hidden and Price/Rent on application printed instead.

EPC (UK specific)
In England & Wales, the EPC rating must be shown. There is no requirement to display the full certificate but, where there is adequate space, the advertisement should show the A-G graph. However, it is recognised that this will not always be possible. In such cases, the advertisement should include the EPC rating of the property instead, e.g. EPC rating C.

Photos
Photos are usually what applicants are most interested in seeing, therefore it is recommended to include the main photo. To keep email file sizes low so they download and open quickly, it is recommended that only one property photo is included in applicant to property match emails as they can include a lot of properties, property to applicant match emails can include more photos as only one property is included in the email.

The following data is not mandatory; however, it is recommended that the inclusion of this data is considered.

Descriptions
The strapline, short description or accommodation summary can be included. The short description will generally be limited to ensure it fits within the designated area. If it is longer than the set limit, an ellipsis (…) is added.

Attributes

Including the following Attributes will give the applicant a quick view of the property’s main points:

• Number of bedrooms, bathrooms and reception rooms

• Tenure (sales)

• Furnishings (lettings/rentals)

Other fields, such as Extra Descriptions and Attributes, can be merged while keeping the details minimal to ensure emails download quickly on receipt. If applicants want to see more detail, they can click through to the website.