sending html mail

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sending html mail

all the rules of html seem to go out the window

nippi

10:29 pm on May 29, 2004 (gmt 0)

I have a client who wishes to send a newsletter using html. I can not seem to get it to work properly. MSN seems to strip links for now reasons. Styles work on fonts, but not on table cells.

I can't include a header and body as this wrecks it in hotmail, but if I don't include one, then it is wrecked in webmail.

Does anyone know of a set of rules to follow when building html mail?

Please no "just send text mail" as its not an option.

tedster

11:59 pm on May 29, 2004 (gmt 0)

The "set of rules" would be to keep the HTML/CSS very, very simple, especially avoiding complex positioning and anything that requires predicatable adherence to the box model or to inheritance rules. Redundant mark-up is your friend here.

Still, be prepared to test in a large number of email clients, both desktop and web based. And even beyond that, know that sending HTML mail exclusively will sacrifice many potential recipients. That's just the way the ground lies today.

I recently saw one survey over a relatively small sample of users - I would imagine that Hotmail is often higher thatn these results show. But at least it gives some sense of the breadth of email clients that are currently in use, and each one has its own quirkiness. This is much more challenging than cross-browser testing of a web page.

Mail Client Survey
Outlook - 29%
Outlook Express - 18%
AOL - 10%
Eudora - 10%
Lotus - 7%
Netscape - 5.5%
Yahoo Mail - 4%
Hotmail - 2.5%
--
Other - 14%
'Other' included:
FirstClass, MS Entourage, Mozilla, Mac OS X Mail,
The Bat!, Open Text, Pegagus, Incredimail, Goldmine,
Juno, Novell GroupWise and Mulberry.

If someone has given you their work address, their company server's spam filter may well be configured to reject ALL html email, or any mail with images attached. You may have better luck with a "multi-part mime" message which sends both HTML and plain text, so that those who cannot receive HTML email still get something.

I realize you said "just send text mail" is not an option. I've been working with email marketing for quite some time, and I honestly feel it's the only viable option in most cases. Where I've been able to convince clients to give it a test, the response rates prove that plain text works better. If a more elaborate message is desired, we just put it on the web and send an invitation to click through.

One of the big issues is the degree of spam filtering that goes on at all levels today. And you usually don't get a bounce message that says "your recent message tested positive as spam and so it was not delivered." Instead, your email just goes to the big bit bucket in the sky.

isitreal

4:39 pm on May 30, 2004 (gmt 0)

I used to have to do some email newsletters, I never had any trouble with the html, keep it simple, use a table for the structure, put the styles after the <body> tag, before the content, and it will render fine. Don't try to use css positioning, that probably won't work in many contexts.

I don't know about how msn treats links though, happily I don't have to do much of that stuff anymore :)