HTML emails: ask to choose or send as multipart/alternative?

[groovyhippo]

I am setting up a weekly e-newsletter to our membership of about 13000 people. I would like to send these emails as HTML rather than plain-text, but of course want to ensure that those with text-only readers don't miss out. As I see it, there are two possiblities:

1. Send an HTML-encoded email with a header of "Content-Type: text/html" but add an HTML comment at the very top of the email (which will only be visible to those with text-only readers) instructing them to visit a link to change their preferences to a text version. They will then be sent text emails in future.

2. Send the email with a header of "Content-Type: multipart/alternative" and then base64 encode both a text version and an HTML version, so their reader can display the most appropriate one.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Which method is considered best?

[Mardi_Gras]

I would use a mail program that supports multipart, and I would put as much effort into the plain text version as the HTML version. Copy is key...

As to base 64 encoding, I'm not sure I understand why you would do that - it is a flag for most spam filters...

[benihana]

do both. ask them to choose and send plain text to those who request it. then send the multipart text/html to the html subscribers.

my email setup lets me view plain text only through a browser but shows html when downloaded to outlook.

[groovyhippo]

I realise that base64 isn't required now - I've done a bit more reading since I posted that!

I certainly will put as much effort into the text version - in fact, the copy will be identical - I will just add some formatting tags around the text for the HTML version.

Benihana - I hadn't thought of doing both approaches, but that makes sense so I'll definitely do that.