Issue #202 All About Email

In partnership with

Hi, friend. 👋

Welcome to Issue #202 of All About Email!

Last week, my fourth guest author of the summer guided us through the most overlooked inbox barrier. What an issue it was! Not only was it the longest, but it was also one of the most engaging ever!

This week, I’m back to writing some stuff, sharing some tools, and code that you can use in your emails!

Let’s go! 👇

Easy Carousels

Back when I was using Mailchimp for my newsletters, Jay Oram from Action Rocket (more on Jay later) approached me with some code to create “easy carousels” that would even work in the Mailchimp editor.

😎 The code worked like a charm, and you can view Jay’s original code for free over at Parcel (the only thing I had to update in the original code was the placeholder images, as the old ones were no longer available).

And this is what the code does:

🎉 A “no-button” carousel with no JavaScript, just some HTML and inline style, and it scrolls beautifully with one finger (or two, whichever you prefer).

Now with Beehiiv, there are some limitations to their custom HTML snippets (which I’ven’t quite figured out how to get around — I might not be able to), e.g., styling tags are stripped out.

🐝 So if you are looking at this email in your inbox, the carousel “might” look slightly different (left-aligned) than in the online version (centre-aligned)…it’s a Beehiiv issue, not a coding issue.

Here's the proof using "Can I Email?" (and even my slight inline CSS mods will work, too):

• The Align Attribute has almost 100% "full support".
   

• The Overflow CSS has over 95% "support" (just over 26% “full support”).
   

• The Style Element has over 78% "support" (just over 63% full support).

If you want to take this code and test it out to see how it looks in different mailboxes, you can use a tool like Email on Acid, Inbox Monster or Parcel (which is what I use).

Cool New Tools!

Some cool things launched last week and are launching this week, and all of these tools are something you can add to your email marketing toolbox. 🧰

Tatami Monitor

🔥 Last week, I had the privilege of a behind-the-scenes demo of Tatami, and it blew me away.

Tatami is like Postmastery…but on another level!

Created by Jesse Hanley of Bento fame, Tatami is an opinionated email monitoring and alerting platform built in-house to manage Bento’s deliverability program.

🎉 Now available to all - it works with SendGrid, SparkPost, SES, Postmark, and more.

Don’t take my word for it - check out Jesse’s short video for a snapshot of what it can do.

If you are sending emails on behalf of clients and use any of the listed services, this tool will make your life much easier!

HTML Test

With Litmus shutting down PutsMail at the end of September 2025, Jay has created a free HTML email testing tool as a replacement.

It’s simple and easy to use with:

• Live Preview

• The ability to send test emails to up to five addresses in a single test.

• Subject line with time stamp

• Email code weight with Gmail warning

Jay also has some features coming soon, including:

• CSS inlining

• MJML option

Email Placeholders

So friend, remember when I said I needed to update Jay’s code with new placeholder images?

🦮 I like dogs, so I wanted to use those images, but Jay has created another new tool I could have used: Email Placeholders - “Professional placeholder images for email templates and designs”.

Jay has built Email Placeholders, providing anyone with a feature-rich, reliable placeholder tool that also has a clean enough domain to send tests.

There is a lot more to come, too. 👇

💡 I’ve been grateful to Jay for allowing me to test and provide feedback on these tools over the last week or so. They are still being refined, and I can’t wait to see how they develop.

Jay deserves the David Baker Lifetime Achievement Award, not only for his exceptional email coding abilities, but also for creating tools that give back to the community.

🧠 Jay has also started a new blog called Lessons in Email, which is going to be a must-read. Don’t forget to sign up for his newsletter.

All About Email - Playlist 🎧

I listen to lots of music, particularly when I’m writing newsletters.

Each week, when I hit the publish button, I’ll share the track I am currently listening to and create the most eclectic email playlist you’ve probably ever heard.

Sponsorship Opportunities

🚨 If you’re interested in sponsoring the “All About Email” newsletter, you can find all the details in this Google Doc.

That’s It For This Week 👋

Next week, we have our fifth guest author of the summer, Elizabeth Jacobi. 🎉

If you missed my previous guest authors, you can catch them below:

• Issue 195 - Vicky Smith

• Issue 197 - Travis Hazelwood

• Issue 199 - Emily Ryan

• Issue 201 - Sarah Gallardo

See you next week!

Email Marketing News & Tips

This week's excellent and insightful email news & tips:

• Automate More Communication - The 5 email sequences you need to earn more paying subscribers. (Lex Roman)

• Ghost 6.0 - It’s here, and it’s a huge upgrade. Is this a destination for newsletters? (Ghost)

• Review My Emails - A new email review platform that’s different from the rest. (Yanna-Torry Aspraki)

• Inbox on the Rocks - Pull up a barstool (or your office chair) for Inbox on the Rocks—where cold drinks meet hot takes on real lifecycle emails. (Customer.io)

• Even With A Small List - How To Book Your First Newsletter Sponsor. (Beehiiv)

• Soft Bounce Risk? - Yahoo Mail slashes free storage from 1 TB to 20 GB. (emailexpert)

• Paid Newsletters - Did "no paywall week" work? Can you add new members? (Lex Roman)

• Writing for Yourself - 12 Lessons From Building a Multi-6-Figure Newsletter Business with CJ Gustafson. (Growth in Reverse)

• Newsletter Monetisation - The Super-Simple Newsletter Format That Actually Helps You Retain Paying Subscribers, Members, or Donors. (Inbox Collective)

• Email Love London - I wish I was there. (Email Love)

• Testi@ - An alternative rendering tester? (Spam Resource)

• Another New MCP Server - Customer.io’s new MCP server lets AI assistants like Claude see into your actual marketing workspace. Unlocking smarter segments, strategies, and campaign creation using real data. (Customer.io)

• Revenue Rulebreaker - What's the difference between a free newsletter, a paid newsletter and email marketing? Which kind is right for you? (Lex Roman)

If you have a question about this email or email marketing, reply, and I will answer you as soon as possible.

I hope you have a great week! 👋