Often the greatest divides result from the simplest of things. 1 chromosome in your DNA, the continuous flow of a river or whether your prospects enable images in their emails.

Whether you are marketing B2B or B2C this problem is the same, but the solution is very simple.

Send email messages in the right format to everyone on your list.

Personalized marketing is not just about putting the first name, company name, etc in your marketing message. It is also about catering to preferences. Test your response to image-heavy HTML emails, HTML emails using background colors for the design and a simple email text message.

Track who responds to each type and remember those settings for future messages. If you like, have a link in each email message that allows your prospects to specify their preference.

Here’s this email divide in action:

Email: Text Version

Email: HTML

If you asked me which format is better for your messages? I wouldn’t know. (It’s not called the great email divide for nothing. )

But if you know which customer segments are more visual, how they have been responding to your image-laden html messages or if you just asked them. The choice is clear for you.

Every message you send out, you’ll be sending email messages that give you a better response.

Will some people still label you a spammer? Probably.

Will you get better response with targeted email structure and design styles? Definitely.

Related posts:

Marketing Sherpa’s 2009 Email benchmarking guide:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/exs/Email09Excerpt.pdf

Converting email with images blocked:
http://www.betterresponseblog.com/index.php/marketing/converting-email-with-blocked-images/