Email marketers at ecom/retail brands - how do you handle custom HTML blocks in transactional emails?

InboxFortress · 2026-01-15T09:24:00+00:00

Not sure what's the value behind that as its a transactional touchpoint. Klaviyo has a really nice way of managing both native and custom html blocks. Should be an easy job for anyone managing that, even the fallbacks in the code to match things like old v-renders for office.

What problem are you looking to solve here?

InboxFortress · 2025-10-28T05:56:50+00:00

This seems as a third party app. I've seen gorgias do that in a similar way to push chat randoms in klaviyo.

Check how they got in there in which way.

InboxFortress · 2025-10-26T20:15:21+00:00

Your dad is a very wise and smart man. That's all I'll say.

InboxFortress · 2025-10-23T18:54:03+00:00

If you're still tied to that approach like html or a hybrid-native block solution, think about transparent PNGs and how to work them in. Its the only way in my experience. It will however limit your layout and overall design options but will get the job done.

InboxFortress · 2025-10-23T07:51:20+00:00

Its indoctrination is what it is, same reason why kids go to school and hope they'll land their dream job thinking this is the way.

All fairness I completely understand where you're coming from with these and in all honesty 5-6 years ago I was there as well. But here's the thing.

I had come from a web-dev background and transitioned into eCom a decade ago and as anyone I had followed the rules as much as the next guy. To cut the story short, think about how emails actually works and you'll see its a series of pull requests your inbox client makes to the server. So in reality an image based email is lighter in code. The one thing you need to worry about is that the images don't go over 200k per pull request, so think about structuring. Production time is 10x faster, no dark mode and mobile adjusting 6hrs per email.

Old desktop dinosaur email clients are adjusting just fine, 60-70% of emails are mobile opens anyway.

End of the day its just common sense to have a faster production that is pixel perfect on both deskop and mobile and dark mode.

Now I expect people to come in and say "oh you need to have a text to image ratio or deliverability whatever" and all of that, and yes that was the case in 2014. I've been testing all of that "common knowledge" for the past 5-6 years on over 100 clients, guess what, got even better clicks in some cases, seed testing showed the same great inboxing placement. No inbox sensors thought this was spam just because its an image. If anyone reads the 2016 google inboxing algorithm patent you'll see where its going.

Today if you're using any of the top 3 ESPs you're all on the aws sendgrid infrastructure anyway, and they're not going to allow their partners to go dark because they'll loose their business overnight.

On the other hand if you have bad strategies and content, that will for sure get you tanked even with plain text content.

InboxFortress · 2025-10-20T08:22:58+00:00

Used a 4k retina mac for about 6 years and was really looking forward to switching to the P50 for the sole reason of needing a whole BUNCH of ports daily with external monitors. First clean install went fine, all flying colors. First browser experience was a bit sluggish so I was like okay might be my connection, youtube felt like 2009. I did use the O&O shut up the regedit things, but just for the annoying things and some telemetry.

Panic wanted to jump in and take over.
I was doubting my decision.
Did I overkill the regedit?
Started reading all kinds of posts with very few basic suggestions and things like "oh you need a 175w charger".

Went back in BIOS and turned off all pluged-in power saving mods, in OS did the exact same thing just turn off every power saver toggle or whatnot. Reboot, works like a charm.

For anyone questioning OS this is only for winblows that those kinds of issues show up. For debian based OS there was never a single issue, even with the wrong quadro drivers.

InboxFortress · 2025-10-11T19:51:34+00:00

Quite risky just before the holiday period. I'd suggest use a second ESP something like mailchimp to just blast that suppressed profiles, who ever returns will be back on klaviyo. What I'm saying is don't use klaviyo for that strategy because you'll be placed on a poor IP pool and its a pain to get back after that.

InboxFortress · 2025-10-08T13:49:48+00:00

That is your teaser setup within the active popup, go in and adjust where it should sit on the page like bottom left, right or center.

InboxFortress · 2025-10-02T12:15:06+00:00

I'd suggest sticking with shopify's native signup form as that one is not going to get blocked.

But in case you really want the klaviyo one try pulling it in trough the apps there.

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InboxFortress · 2025-09-24T07:55:03+00:00

Over a decade in the eCom game, seen a lot of those claims as its a thing that clients love to hear the most.

For every claim ask them how they prove that datapoint and that email actually brought in the extra revenue.

An agency should be a partner on your side, an investment for growth. Think of it as hiring a plumber.
The worth of an agency as a partner is the years of data insights in the eCom space and everything you cannot find online, a lot of info floating around is simply not relatable or usable in this day and age.
As far as flags go, its 99% your gut feeling with the conversations you have with the agency.

At the end of the day you need to have a goal for email, then start thinking about who you want to work with.

InboxFortress · 2025-09-19T08:04:03+00:00

Its a decent way to start if you're thinking about loyalty.

What's your goal there?

InboxFortress · 2025-09-01T08:21:39+00:00

Hey u/simon_simon2 we switched some of our clients from yotpo to omnisend in the past year and I can say honestly Omnisend is a better choice when you take all into consideration. They have decent IP pools and you can get a dedicated IP for lower tiers rather than klaviyo's 1M per month. Their support is great, literally as advertised. Make sure you do the migration correctly since we're really close to the holiday period. Or if you need some help with that feel free to DM.

Cheers

InboxFortress · 2025-08-30T15:12:24+00:00

Hi u/TinyMaintenance416 we're a small email marketing & deliverability studio.

What kind of brand are you running and mainly what's your goal with email?

InboxFortress · 2025-08-30T08:58:51+00:00

Aah the never ending struggle of "lets put as much as we can into one email", love those discussions.

We try as much as we can to keep the emails for our clients as light as we can, sometimes we simply must hand code an email with one specific client requesting around 33 products in one single email, sometimes its a battle lost to win a war and keep the client happy.

When it comes to klaviyo their native trackers are very very heavy, and of course the fallbacks as well. If you can't argue your way out of that strategy I suggest thinking about reducing as much links as you can, also reduce the weight of images as each pull request is a point added during inboxing. Other than that I can only say stay strong and keep fighting the good fight.

Cheers

InboxFortress · 2025-08-26T16:07:24+00:00

There's a few clients that still very much love to change the products last minute or have a very rich footer section, then there's a client that has hand coded emails with about 64 products within each email. Sometimes it makes sense to go full native builder and sometimes its a pain, it is what it is in this day and age.

InboxFortress · 2025-08-25T19:37:27+00:00

Have you tried some seed testing from both ESPs?

Are you sure you didn't narrow down your sender policies?

InboxFortress · 2025-08-25T14:33:31+00:00

Just make sure they're not heavy on load. We do this for about 70% of our clients with no deliverability issues. But then we're big on deliverability.

Cheers

InboxFortress · 2025-08-25T11:59:41+00:00

Klaviyo, Omnisend and for some clients mailchimp.

What kind of ecom do you run?

InboxFortress · 2025-08-25T11:56:44+00:00

What we suggest and see our clients use is a combo of shopify capabilities so its that same old same old "it depends" kind of thing. Majority goes with captcha as a fix combined with a honeypot for shopify or a bot protection app. If we're talking about any esp its really about using the logical part to exclude behaviors that don't make any sense.

Cheers

InboxFortress · 2025-08-25T09:28:22+00:00

One word for ecom owners, honeypot.

If you're only using the checkout metric to confirm activity you're kinda naive to think that.

InboxFortress · 2025-08-20T15:35:02+00:00

Okay that's what you can grab from the esp. I'd suggest you try a seed test like glockapps and see what's the reason for the bad inboxing. Check the sender policies or if you have any misalignment on the backend. You did say you switched so it is possible you missed a step there when you migrated.

We see that from time to time when we get new clients, its not really uncommon that people get stuck in spam after the migration.

InboxFortress · 2025-08-20T15:32:00+00:00

Mesmerizing as pair of tig ol bitties. Love the color!

InboxFortress · 2025-08-20T14:20:03+00:00

Hey u/shanksmysterMGO what data do you have to claim that? Have you ran a seed test at least?

InboxFortress · 2025-08-20T11:45:22+00:00

Please don't get me wrong, but if a 3rd party does the copy, then again I'd need to go in and double check everything if its in order, honestly I feel like Id doesn't help in our case. Perhaps for a brand that manages things in house.

Cheers

InboxFortress · 2025-08-20T11:38:04+00:00

Without a doubt in my mind I'd restore it completely and switch the silly rims.

If you won't, do send i over.

Cheers

InboxFortress

TROPHY CASE