A plain text email contains no HTML formatting, no images, no colors, no custom layout, just unformatted text that displays identically across every email client, closer in appearance to a personal message than a marketing campaign.
Why Stripping Everything Out Sometimes Wins
Plain text email vs HTML isn’t a question of which is universally better, since each has a genuine use case:
- HTML email, covered in detail elsewhere in this glossary, supports branding, product imagery, and visual hierarchy, better suited for promotional content that benefits from showing a product.
- Plain text email reads as more personal and less obviously automated, which can outperform HTML specifically in contexts where authenticity matters more than visual polish.
A plain text email also sidesteps the entire rendering inconsistency problem covered under email client and HTML email elsewhere in this glossary, since there’s no layout to break across different clients in the first place.
Plain Text Email Examples That Work Well
- A founder or CEO note, sent as if personally written, benefits from looking exactly like a real personal email rather than a branded campaign.
- A cold outreach or B2B message, covered under cold email elsewhere in this glossary, almost always uses plain text, since HTML styling immediately signals “marketing email” in a context where that signal hurts response rates.
- A/B testing a promotional send against a plain text version occasionally reveals that a segment responds better to the less polished, more personal format, particularly for a list that’s grown fatigued with heavily designed campaigns.
When to Use Plain Text Email in an Ecommerce Context
When to use plain text email for a product-based business is narrower than for a service or content business, since showing the actual product usually matters. It tends to work best for relationship-building sends specifically, a personal note, a survey request, a genuine check-in, rather than for anything where the product itself needs to be visually front and center.
Related terms:
A simple answer to what is a plain text email worth remembering: no design decisions to make, which is exactly why it works so well for messages meant to feel personal rather than produced. Adflipr’s email builder supports both HTML and plain text formats, letting a store choose the right format for each specific send rather than defaulting to one style for everything.
