The comparison chart email for a range nobody can choose between

Choice paralysis is a conversion problem with an email fix

A customer who can't tell two of your products apart doesn't pick the cheaper one. They defer. Deferring means going off to do something else, and it's why category pages with wide ranges convert worse than narrow ones.

The chart takes that decision off the site and puts it in the inbox, where you control the order, the rows and the recommendation. Very few formats sell this directly without a code attached.

It's also the one most often built badly. The instinct is to put everything in.

Three products, four rows, one recommendation

Four rows covers almost every range. If a fifth genuinely changes somebody's decision, drop the weakest of the first four instead of adding to the pile.

The recommendation is the bit brands leave out, on the theory that a neutral table is more honest. It isn't more honest. It's less useful, and the customer is left guessing at exactly the thing you declined to tell them.

A table with three columns doesn't survive a phone

Most of your list is reading on a screen narrower than the table you designed. A three column grid either shrinks below readable or scrolls sideways. Both mean the email failed at the only job it had.

• Stack the products as cards on narrow screens, one after another, each with the same four lines in the same order
• Put the differentiating line first inside each card, not the product name
• Use words instead of ticks, because a tick with no column heading in view means nothing
• Keep the recommendation visible in every card, not once at the bottom

Test it on an actual phone before it sends. This is the campaign where a rendering problem does the most damage, because here the layout is the content.

Sorting by buyer beats sorting by specification

That send never puts a chart in front of anybody. It sorts the range by who is doing the buying, so the same information sits around the reader instead of around your catalogue. It's also far easier to build responsively.

Use the chart when the products are genuinely similar and the differences are technical. Use the buyer form when they differ by occasion or by user. Most ranges want one of each, a month apart.

The chart belongs on the site as well

Once the rows are written they're the most useful content on your category page, in the abandonment sequence, and in whatever support says when somebody asks which one should I get. Write it once for the email and use it in all four places.

Ask support which two products people confuse

They'll answer straight away, because the question lands every week. Those two products are your campaign. The four rows are whatever the support reply usually says.

Then look at the category page for the same pair. If the difference isn't stated above the fold, the email will outperform the page it links to, and that's a site problem the campaign has just diagnosed, not an email win.