We do offer to automatically generate your plain text email from your HTML version. We recommend using this method because 1) it saves you tons of time and 2) spam filters do look at each version of your campaign to see if they are similar, since spammers tend to hide information this way. Click here to learn how.

If you still want to do it the long way (or are using IE6...but really, don't, it's so much better to upgrade or use another browser), here's how:

  1. To start your plain text campaign, go to your Campaigns Tab and click on create campaign.
  2. Then, choose plain text campaign as your format.
    Create Plain Text Campaign

    3. The main thing to remember about plain-text email messages is that there is no formatting whatsoever. No special fonts, colors, bolding, italics, underlines, etc. It is plain, old fashioned text (not that there's anything wrong with that).

    Use a Simple Text Editor

    So don't try to create a plain-text message in Microsoft Word, because the formatting just won't work. You need to use a very simple text editor, like Windows NotePad (comes free with Windows) or TextWrangler (for Macs). If you're a programmer or designer, use one of your HTML editors, like BBEdit (for Mac), Notepad ++ (for PC), or Fookes NoteTab Pro (PC).

    Make it easy to read

    Since the message is plain-text, black and white, and most likely uses a mono-space font (courier or something like that), you have to "get old school" and use some little tricks to make the message easy to skim and scan. 

    ====================
This is my headline
====================

And here's some intro copy for
my plain-text message, and
here's some bullet points:

** Bullet one
** Another point
** Third reason
** Get the point?

====================
    URLs Might Not Click

    Of course, you won't be able to code links like you do in HTML email. Placing <A HREF=""> tags won't work. You just have to type the URL in your plain-text message and hope that people understand to copy-paste it into their browser. Or hope that their email application made the URL "clickable." Some email applications will turn any URL it sees into a clickable link automatically. But many don't. Still, others only work half the time. So you might want to give some brief instructions to people, like:

    =========================
To visit our new site, go to this URL in your browser:
http://www.MailChimp.com
=========================

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