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Responsive Emails and VinSolutions

Rob

Boss
Apr 9, 2011
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Rob
The VinSolutions support team is supposedly looking into this, but maybe there's a better way.

I've designed (decent) responsive email templates with the intention of using them in VinSolutions. They look great when viewing the HTML preview. They look great when sending from anything but VinSolutions. The formatting gets all wonky when sending from VinSolutions.

I've had responsive email templates professionally designed. Same deal, so it's not *just* that I'm bad at making templates.

Assuming VinSolutions support takes a long time and / or can't resolve my issue..

Does anyone know of a company that can design email templates that *don't* break in VinSolutions? Searches have given me nothing...

TIA

Rob
 
Rob,
Persistence pays with VinSolutions. Trust me, when I call they must all shudder at the knees. I'm on their A$$ when something takes a long time and never let up until I get a resolution. They also have a heavy workload of requests, but just like anything in this business...constant contact and persistence wins over the guy who sits and waits on the hope system.

Or contact your Vin Rep...my guy answers his cell phone whenever I call or at least texts me to inform me he'll get back to me soon. I've had him sink his teeth into a few people in desking/forms support and he always comes through.

Did you also try the create the email in Text format vs. HTML to see the differences? Try using your template in a word doc (MS WORD, notepad, etc.) then copy and paste into the creation tool. I've found much better results when using Internet Explorer versus Chrome or Firefox when creating templates.

My 1st post, finally out of lurker status!

Good Luck,
Dave
 
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I'm having a few problems with vinsolutions at the moment. # 1 on my list is I can't see when customers are opening emails anymore. I created a ticket 24 hours ago about not receiving read receipt alerts

Is anyone else having this specific problem?
 
Rob,
Persistence pays with VinSolutions. Trust me, when I call they must all shudder at the knees. I'm on their A$$ when something takes a long time and never let up until I get a resolution. They also have a heavy workload of requests, but just like anything in this business...constant contact and persistence wins over the guy who sits and waits on the hope system.

Or contact your Vin Rep...my guy answers his cell phone whenever I call or at least texts me to inform me he'll get back to me soon. I've had him sink his teeth into a few people in desking/forms support and he always comes through.

Did you also try the create the email in Text format vs. HTML to see the differences? Try using your template in a word doc (MS WORD, notepad, etc.) then copy and paste into the creation tool. I've found much better results when using Internet Explorer versus Chrome or Firefox when creating templates.

My 1st post, finally out of lurker status!

Good Luck,
Dave

I have mixed feelings about VinSolutions as a whole. It's great in a lot of ways, but really just strange / off / old in others... And while persistence may pay off, I have *zero* interest in begging for support on a 5 figure / month account. That is nuts. Crazy. Wacko.

I usually make the templates in Notepad, then run them through a CSS inliner, and paste into VinSolutions. The media query stuff has to stay up top, of course.

The formatting looks great when sending as a regular HTML email; it's only in VinSolutions that it breaks. I'm sure there's some bizarro-world trick to make it work, but I can't figure it out.
 
I've had the same issue Rob. I get through everything, confirm it looks good, then Vin breaks it somehow...could never figure out the reason either. After several attempts, I just ended up abandoning it due to lost time and a lot of aggravation.

You can always mention DealerSocket to your Vin "Pro" and that it's time to re-evaluate if VinSolutions is still worth it. I used that as a method to get something resolved and had several calls the same day and it was fixed. I know, why beg if you're paying so much for it. But money moves people, whether they are threatened to losing or gaining it.
 
I just spoke with VinSolutions support - they still haven't updated their support for HTML email. Their official response was that they support HTML4 email and nothing past that - no CSS or JS supported. They're working on it but with no definite ETA on releasing better email support. The official line I got was "our development team is working hard to bring us into the 21st century".
 
I just spoke with VinSolutions support - they still haven't updated their support for HTML email. Their official response was that they support HTML4 email and nothing past that - no CSS or JS supported. They're working on it but with no definite ETA on releasing better email support. The official line I got was "our development team is working hard to bring us into the 21st century".

To be fair, that's basically the state of email.
You can use inline CSS and some proper CSS, but JS does not work in emails.
Various clients, like Outlook, actually use terrible rendering systems that only support HTML4.
HTML5 is essentially a javascript/interactive spec for HTML, none of which applies to emails.

Google is working to change this by taking over email with their AMP spec for emails.