Mailrox makes HTML email something any small business owner can leverage to help them save money on their email marketing efforts.
The benefits of a strong email marketing campaign for small businesses are many. They reduce the time, effort and overhead costs associated with typical B2B or direct-to-consumer marketing campaigns. HTML email is a fantastic way to supply your customers with a rich email experience to perfectly match your branding and marketing efforts. Unfortunately properly designing, developing and deploying an HTML email can be a confusing process for the not-so tech savvy. Enter Mailrox.
Mailrox is a web based tool that takes the HTML out of HTML email. The tool allows you to go from design to deployment in 4 easy steps, without having to do any complex coding.
All you need to do to create an HTML email is:
- Upload a design
- Define the Layout
- Add text or custom HTML
- Export the template
Defining the layout is where the magic of Mailrox comes in to play. After the design has been uploaded, special slicing tools are used to define the different sections of the design into 5 different types.
Original
The slice will become an image where you have the ability to add custom ALT text, add a link to the image, set the images format to .jpg or .png and adjust its quality.
Nothing
This option will convert the slice in to blank space where only the background color of the design will show through. This is useful because each defined slice will become an image, and many slices means many images for the server to download. So by defining certain blank slices as nothing, it will reduce the load on the server when the customer is downloading the email.
Color Fill
Similar to the nothing option this will stop the slice from being converted into an image but also allows you set a custom color and add a link to the slice.
Text
This options is used for the text areas of your design. An easy to use text editor allows you to bold, link or set headers (h1, h2, h3 etc.) to the text content. You also have the ability to adjust the padding of the slice.
Export
After the design has been uploaded, slices defined and customization has been completed, Mailrox allows you to export your HTML email in 3 formats. HTML & Images for hosting on your server or specially prepared templates for both MailChimp and Campaign Monitor. The latter 2 options are great additions to the service as both MailChimp and Campaign Monitor are widely adopted email marketing campaign services among small businesses. If you're not currently using one of these services I would recommend checking them out as they help with the automation and analytics involved with email marketing.
The biggest benefit of Mailrox is its compatibility. Mailrox states that with their service you can "Quickly build bulletproof HTML emails". Bulletproof is a strong word to use when talking about HTML email compatibility because there are so many email providers that handle HTML email in very different ways. This makes it difficult to ensure that your HTML email looks the same for everyone that views it. Mailrox boasts they are compatible with Apple Mail , Lotus Notes, Outlook, Thunderbird, AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail!, iPhone and Windows Phone 7 which covers most of the major players.
With Mailrox's ease of use & accessibility features combined with its useful export features & compatibility guarantee it's no longer necessary to know complex HTML when creating an email marketing campaign. The tool is still in its BETA stage but all this means is that new features are constantly being added.