The Brief

Deaking University Alumni needed to build a highly customised email template that would work with their Blackbaud mailing system. This was a clunky system that did not follow modern email software standards, but we were tasked with building a template that in spite of this, would render perfectly on all browsers, phones, tablets AND the MS Outlook. It was a huge undertaking indeed!

Our Approach

• The Deakin Blackbaud system was not capable of building HTML templates that were cross compatible with devices, platforms and browsers using their WYSIWYG editor.
• The setup of the mail server was incomplete and this contributed to multiple emails being flagged as spam by their recipients.
• Many users were viewing emails on their phones, but the current template was not mobile responsive.
• The bulk of their audience viewed emails in MS Outlook but their current template did not render correctly in Outlook.

Our Solution

• Working together with Deakin’s graphic designers we came up with a design that would work across all platforms.
• We then hand coded the template using HTML tables and limited use of CSS to overcome cross compatibility issues.
• We implemented system overrides in the email to assist with rendering issues on MS Outlook.
• We performed extensive testing using Email on Acid and Litmus testing services.
• We troubleshooted the Deakin Email server and identified several issues that needed to be addressed by Blackbaud so that the email was not flagged as spam.

The Results

We created a beautiful template that continues to delight the Deakin Alumni audience each month!