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http://trustworthy.host
HTML email allows an unreasonable level of deception. How does your mail client render this? http://trustworthy.host If you can't get your message across in a plain text email, you may want to reconsider whether your intent is to mislead.
The problem is that marketing wants designed emails to the customer that catches the customer's eye. For the most part, plain text marketing emails end up TL;DR.
HTML email allows an unreasonable level of deception. How does your mail client render this? http://trustworthy.host If you can't get your message across in a plain text email, you may want to reconsider whether your intent is to mislead.
I wholeheartedly agree, and we had a discussion about plain text vs html emails at my org a while back. The problem is that marketing wants designed emails to the customer that catches the customer's eye. For the most part, plain text marketing emails end up TL;DR.
Multi-part mime types for a html and a text email for those of us who don't read HTML in our email :)
NO
HTML e-mail was and is an awful idea.
My MUA doesn't need to be a browser as well. Stop the madness, please.
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no. NO HTML e-mail was and is an awful idea. My MUA doesn't need to be a browser as well. Stop the madness, please.
Lovely framework, but can someone explain why HTML email is so stuck in the past? Why can't email clients just abide by proper web standards?
I think it was around Outlook 2007 Microsoft decided that instead of using Internet Explorer to render their emails, they would use Microsoft Word. That's right. Word. And now whenever you try to use even the most basic CSS rules, Outlook fucks it up very badly. Then there is that abomination called Lotus Notes (mainly Outlook 2007 makes IE6 look like the best browser in the world.
Also, +1 on using Litmus for testing rendering across different clients.
There are also other things to consider when designing email templates and email deliverability in general.
- Always use multi-part, with a nice text part. Not having a text part is a spam flag.
- Keep the ratios of images and links to text low. High ratios are spam flags. Also, most of the time images will not be displayed by default.
- Use common sense, avoiding exclamations and referencing spammy words (eg. buy now!).
- Avoid link shorteners (commonly used in phishing emails)
- Use Litmus to test against spam filters to see where common sense fails.
- mail-tester.com is another nice free tool for checking for spam flags.
- There are also some little things that can trip you up, like having malformed message-Ids where the domain in the message-ID does not match the sending domain.
For more thoughts, we have a best practices (http://documentation.mailgun.com/best_practices.html)
Edit: Also, PLEASE only send emails to people that have given you (like on your website) permission and you have validated the email address with a confirmation link (double opt-in) before sending subsequent emails. Always give recipients the conspicuous and easy ability to unsubscribe.