Why Pasting External Web Content into an Email is a Minefield

51% of marketers today struggle with finding the time to create enough high-quality, custom content for marketing. That’s why your most effective peers aren’t afraid to repurpose and reuse existing organizational assets. Your company’s blog articles, web announcements, and support documents can make extraordinarily effective copy for email marketing campaigns.

However, simply copy and pasting web content into an email for mass-communications is a minefield. Marketers who attempt this operation might not discover the fact until the email is sent, and find themselves wondering what went quite so wrong.

Website HTML is typically very different than email HTML. Formatting for readability, including headers and line spacing, can be lost in translation. Not only will this result in an unprofessional and difficult-to-read email, the bad HTML can trigger spam filters.

Fortunately, there is a solution for marketers hoping to translate web pages into mass email communications that’s more efficient than completely retyping the entire page of copy. The secret is taking the time to remove the formatting from the content, and then adding it back in manually. Using Flashissue or another email marketing platform, it shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes maximum.

How to Remove Formatting From Web Page Content for Email Marketing

1. Copy and Paste

Simply copy and paste the desired web content into the body of your email marketing message.

2. Highlight

When the relevant web content has been added, simply highlight all copied and pasted content by clicking and dragging. Ensure no content has been omitted from your selection.

3. Remove Formatting

To remove any HTML formatting that won’t translate well in email, remove the formatting manually. Flashissue users can accomplish this by clicking the “Tx” button in the toolbar :

4. Add Formatting Back In

Using the format text features in your email marketing, manually restore formatting to your content. Add headers, bullet points, numbered lists, bold text, and italics. Continue to edit using Flashissue or another email platform’s WYSIWYG functionality (what you see is what you get) until you’re satisfied with the final appearance of your email.

No email marketer wants to find out after sending a mass communication that their attempt at repurposing website content into an email marketing message turned into a formatting nightmare or triggered a spam filter. By manually removing formatting, you’ll gain the ability to ensure your web content translates well to email.