Converting PSD to HTML Email – All You Need to Know

The PSD to HTML email conversion is one of the most important stages you go through when working on your email marketing campaigns. Today it is synonymous with email coding and for the purposes of this article we are going to refer to the process of email coding as PSD to HTML email conversion.

The quality of the PSD to HTML email conversion is crucial for the success of your email marketing campaign. It ensures that the beautiful designs you spent so much time and efforts on will be displayed properly on your clients’ laptops, tablets and mobile phones.

This is also the geekiest stage of the email marketing campaign preparation process and you need someone you can trust to do the conversion for you. But before we go into the more technical side of the PSD to HTML email conversion process, let’s go though the main reasons for converting your email designs to HTML emails.

7 Important Reasons for Converting PSD to HTML Email

1. Solidify Your Brand Presence

Email marketing is one of the most successful forms of digital marketing. There are studies that show a $38 ROI for every $1 invested. Email Marketing allows you to stay in touch with your clients, notify them about product sales and promotions, send out news and updates and generally solidify your brand presence in your clients’ lives. To do all this successfully you have to have a solid way to deliver your engaging designs to your clients’ inboxes intact and this is the main role of the PSD to HTML email conversion.

2. Plain Text Email Won’t Cut It

As an email marketer you wish your emails to show your brand’s style and identity, include product images and effective call to actions. These are all features a plain text email does not offer, you’ll need an HTML email template to style your email message.

3. Product Presentation is Key for Ecommerce

If you run an e-commerce business, you want to be able to show your products in the best light possible. Probably you even want to show them exactly as they appear on your website, so your clients could navigate through familiar environment and make purchases easier. This means that you will need a designer to prepare your email in a PSD format, which then will have be converted from PSD to HTML email.

4. Mobile Becomes the Standard

Most recent data shows that over half of the opened emails are read on mobile, which means that you can’t afford to disappoint your mobile users. The proper PSD to HTML email conversion will ensure that your emails are displayed correctly on tablets and mobile phones.

5. Abundance of Email Clients

There are over 50 modern email clients (desktop, web and mobile) your emails should render correctly on. Sometimes even a minor layout inconsistency, may lead to the email being closed and deleted. The only way to ensure that your designs will render flawlessly on all these email clients is if they are properly converted from PSD to HTML email.

6. Email Marketing Platforms

To use an email marketing platform for sending good-looking emails, you will need them to be converted in HTML format. Email marketing platforms allow you to track your campaigns’ performance, see who opens your emails, who is clicking links or which addresses your emails bounce from. This is just one more reason why you would need to reach out to a PSD to HTML email conversion specialists.

7. Code in Variables

You need variables coded in your emails, when you wish to import information in your emails dynamically, like first names, a count down timer or to display different types of products for different clients, etc. Variables allow you to use a single email template for various client groups, which is very helpful when segmenting your email marketing list. The only way to get variables coded in your emails is to convert your PSDs to HTML emails.

PSD to HTML Email Conversion – Let’s Get Technical!

Step one in the PSD to HTML email conversion process is getting your PSD done. The PSD holds your email design, which has to be smart, engaging and consistent with your brand identity. However, the email designers don’t enjoy the same creative freedom the website designers have.

Each email client has its own way of rendering emails, furthermore many modern email clients offer very limited HTML rendering capabilities. These rendering inefficiencies require the use of obsolete HTML coding techniques and doesn’t allow the support of videos, animations, sliders, hover effects, etc.

All this comes to say that the designer working on your PSD has to have experience with designing email templates, so the PSD to HTML conversion goes as smoothly as possible and the HTML email is as close as possible to the initial design.
The task for every PSD to HTML email conversion agency is to get you a pixel perfect HTML email, coded within the limitations of the email client world. These are the two main rules that apply to converting PSD to HTML email:

1) There will be tables, lots of tables. You have to use tables to hold your HTML email together. The tables will allow you to structure the template, set paddings, margins, backgrounds, style the text, etc.
2) All your CSS goes inline, as good part of the email clients don’t support separate CSS files.

For detailed review of the differences between the email HTML and the web HTML check out the article 19 Big Differences Between Email and Web HTML.

Converting PSD to HTML Email With Bare Hands

As we said in the beginning the PSD to HTML email conversion is a geeky job. To achieve the best possible results you’ll need to contact a team of experienced HTML email coding experts.

It’s true that there are online PSD to HTML email conversion tools, but we have tested the best of them (you bet we did) and the results don’t come even close to the hand-written HTML code provided by MailBakery or some of our best competitors – customised, lean, logical, commented HTML mark up.

Even though there are certain technical limitations when it comes to HTML email coding, every agency has its little secrets that allow it to get even the craziest email design hold together in your clients’ inbox.

A PSD to HTML email conversion agency will ensure that your emails look and perform on mobile devices, as your designer intended them to.

If you want your email template to be compatible with and editable by your email marketing platform, there are platform-specific layouts that need to be created. Only a PSD to HTML email conversion agency can incorporate the needed tags that create the custom layouts/editable zones.

A reputable PSD to HTML email agency will not only create your custom HTML email template, but it’ll import the template and set it up in your account. This way saving you time to focus on more important marketing tasks.

Quality assurance is very important part of the email template coding. Every respectable PSD to HTML email conversion agency who truly cares about its clients is going to test your emails with services like Litmus or Email on Acid.

If there are any small changes or updates to be made on your HTML email template for your future email campaigns, every trustworthy agency will be more than happy to help you with them for free.

Conclusion

The PSD to HTML email conversion process may not sound that elaborate a task, but the success of your email marketing campaign depends heavily on it. If your subscribers don’t see your email message, as you intended it to be seen, it simply won’t work.

So, don’t rush it, take your time to do your research and find the most convenient PSD to HTML email conversion partner for you.

And remember, that at least for PSD to HTML email conversions, human skills still beat software automation.

If you need assistance with your PSD to HTML email conversion projects, see what MailBakery can do for you and submit your project brief.