Question: What's the best way to show a URL in the text of an email message? Does it vary from HTML to text?
Answer: Always remember that the URL is basically computer code, and it's always a good idea to show as little code as possible in your email message, no matter which format you're using.
With HTML messages, you shouldn't show the whole URL unless you have a specific reason to do so. For example: http://www.This-Is-a-URL.com/subscribe/ doesn’t provide much value to the reader.
Hide the URL behind a descriptive word or phrase that either names the company or product or tells readers what action you want them to take.
For example, replace the URL with a call to action like Sign up here! by using the following HTML code:
You don't have that same option in text, so you will have to show the entire URL in order to make it clickable.
However, if you send a multi-part message with both HTML and text, and you rely on your email-marketing software to translate the link for the text version, it will render tracking URLs and long strings of characters that mean nothing to readers and might interfere with them reading your message. So, plan to recode those URLs to make them as short as possible, even if you have to sacrifice some metric analysis.
This is especially important for mobile readers, because tracking links can eat up four to five lines on a small screen.
