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Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋
Welcome to Issue #207 of All About Email!
Last week, we talked about links, but not how you might expect. What did 6,117 clicks say about you, lovely readers (and what I’m changing)?
This week, I’ve a few more things to say about links, including accessibility, a riddle and improving your linking strategy.
Let’s go! 👇
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The Humble Link
When is a link not a link? - when it looks like a button!
But then, is it really a button?…more on that later. 😉
There’s a lot that goes into writing an email, but who would have thought the humble link is more complex than you think, {{first_name|friend}}?
Sarah Gallardo has an in-depth four-part series on links, called “Links Deep Dive”, which looks at links from a user and accessibility perspective:
Part One - Examines how different users interact with links in emails and stresses that links must “work like links,” avoid redundancy, and use simple, expected HTML.
Part Two - Focuses on link formatting for accessibility. How to code, style, and structure links to meet assistive-technology expectations.
Part Three - Looks at the content of link text. How visible wording should communicate to make links clear, meaningful, and helpful.
Part Four - Argues for an “accessible linking strategy” that uses fewer, more intentional links to reduce cognitive load and improve usability, especially for people with disabilities.
✅ Please, read the links above; you won’t regret it, and your users will thank you for it. You also won’t look at a link the same way again.
Accessible Linking Strategy
Part Four of Sarah’s guide is particularly relevant to me, as my emails often contain numerous links.
On average, my newsletters contain 30 links per issue, and it is something I actively question: “Does this text need to be a link?”
Sarah states:
Linking everything isn’t just annoying, it’s yet another way we can inadvertently keep users with disabilities from interacting with our emails.
So whilst Part Four of Sarah’s guide is particularly relevant to me, all three parts in her guide play a role (for example, “Link Purpose” in Part Three).
😂 And in case you are wondering there are 49 links in this email!
(I sent myself a test email, asked Gemini within Gmail to count the links, and then I counted to verify.)
Link Performance
🤦♂️ Last week, {{first_name|friend}}, I gave you a breakdown of my link analytics for this newsletter and some insights, but some things I wanted to share and forgot:
I experiment with Emojis beside links to help specific links stand out in the News & Tips section - but this doesn’t always work as expected.
The links in my News & Tips section perform consistently, regardless of the number of links. Notably, the distribution of top-performing links varies for this section, with the most effective ones placed at the beginning and end, rather than in the middle.
Links at the top of my emails typically perform well, as you might expect, but links in the middle and towards the bottom of the main topic perform consistently well, too. **
** I try to insert valuable links throughout my content rather than front-loading them at the top of the newsletter, as I’ve found overall this improves engagement for the newsletter as a whole.
✅ Hopefully, you’ve learned from the last couple of weeks that a link is not just a link. Links provide valuable insights into the content and performance of your email strategy, but they also have a significant role in accessibility.
Remember, I asked, “When is a link not a link”? I will leave you with a riddle and some invaluable information from Mark Robbins. 👇
…when it’s a writing desk. 🤭
Seriously, though, when it’s a link or, in this case, a CTA link.
Mark Robbins explains more about this in his dedicated article over at Good Email Code when this code 👇
<a href="https://parcel.io" style="background-color:#005959; text-decoration: none; padding: .5em 2em; color: #FCFDFF; display:inline-block; border-radius:.4em; mso-padding-alt:0;text-underline-color:#005959"><!--[if mso]><i style="mso-font-width:200%;mso-text-raise:100%" hidden> </i><span style="mso-text-raise:50%;"><![endif]-->My link text<!--[if mso]></span><i style="mso-font-width:200%;" hidden> </i><![endif]-->
</a>Produces this CTA link, which looks like a button. 👇
Mark expands on this code further in his article and explains how to add more styling, considerations for Outlook and more!
🧠 If you want to add some accessibility into the mix (which you should), then Sarah Gallardo’s “Component” series is your place to be, specifically, “What makes an accessible CTA?”.
That’s it for this week, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋
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.
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Email Marketing News & Tips
This week's excellent and insightful email news & tips:
Just In Time For The Holidays - Introducing a new purchase tracking view and more relevant promotions in Gmail. (Gmail)
New BIMI Update - Understanding the avp tag in BIMI records. (BIMI Group)
Happy Birthday! - “Can I Email“ turns six! 🎉 (Hussein Al Hammad)
New HippoTools - Drag & Drop AMP is coming to Braze. (Lior Peleg)
Q&A - Yahoo taking over Xfinity's email accounts. (Alison Gootee & Al Iverson)
Don’t Heed Bad Advice - Debunking Email Myths. (Lauren Meyer)
Best Practice - How Often Should I Actually Send My Newsletter? (Inbox Collective)
From Minimal to Whimsical - How We Redesigned Userlist in 2025 (Userlist)
Movement & Interactivity - Throw boring out the window and bring emails to life. (Jay Oram & Des Brown)
$9M with 50k subscribers - Sam Vander Wielen's 7-figure newsletter funnel. (Growth In Reverse)
Ugh! - Email forwarding in 2025. (Al Iverson & Valimail)
If you have any questions about this email or email marketing, please reply, and I will answer you as soon as possible.
I hope you have a great week! 👋
Disclaimer: This illustration is a creative work inspired by Alice in Wonderland. All associated characters and imagery remain the intellectual property of their respective rights holders.