What’s
Behind Your Message?
Today’s email marketers need to take
special precautions in creating viable messages
By Jim Kinkade, Customer
Support Supervisor
Arial Software Tech Support Center
Getting your customers to see your email message
the exact way you intend only occurs in Utopia,
Xanadu or the place called Perfect. Given the
number of mail user agents
(MUAs) available today, you cannot simply plug
in your message and expect everybody to see it
the same way as you—or even as one another
within the same company—would see it. The
increasing amount of spam security implemented
by a growing number of Internet Service Providers
(ISPs) and company network administrators, can
completely ruin the intended effect of your message.
Today’s email marketer needs to take special
precautions when creating a viable message.
Most client-based MUA applications are standard
and will behave much like Outlook Express. The
biggest problems occur when sending your message
to the big three ISPs: Yahoo, Hotmail and America
Online (AOL). Yahoo and Hotmail are Internet-based
MUAs, and AOL has rules that only seem to apply
to them. Because these email clients are widely
used by people signing up for online offers, email
messages need to be designed with their delivery
parameters in mind.
Plain Text & HTML
Plain text messages are usually considered a
safe bet in terms of email formatting. It is extremely
beneficial to try to determine which type of message
a customer prefers at the point where you are
gathering subscriptions. When you send out your
emails it is recommended that you separate plain
text addresses in your database to ensure they
receive just a text message, if you do not, the
HTML may be included as an attachment which can
cause concerns to the recipient. The downside
of sending text-only messages is the difficulty
in tracking hyperlink clicks and inability to
determine message opens.
If the user selects HTML,
or you don't know which type of message your reader
prefers, you should always send a multipart message.
When using Campaign software, selecting “Plain
Text & HTML” from the Message Type:
drop down menu will cause the program to automatically
place a Content-type: Multipart/alternative header
in your message. You never know when the person
who signed up for HTML email a month ago will
suddenly switch (or be switched) to plain text
messages. An increasing number of companies are
disabling the HTML message option in order to
protect themselves against viruses, worms and
obnoxious emails in general. A multipart message
will ensure that no matter which way a recipient’s
MUA is set, your message will get through.
The following versions of AOL support HTML
messages:
- AOL 7.0: HTML, Rich Text, Plain Text
- AOL 6.0: HTML, Rich Text, Plain Text
- AOL 5.0: Rich Text, Plain Text
- AOL 4.0: Plain Text Only
Clients with multipart capabilities will display
the highest level allowed.
Conversely, you don’t want to send multipart
messages to individuals who specify plain text.
They may simply prefer plain text; and, if they’ve
taken the trouble to specify, accidentally receiving
an HTML message could cost you a customer.
HTML Coding
Internet Explorer (IE) is good about deciphering
garbled code. For example: if you send a table
with an empty field, IE will adjust and assume
you meant to include a non-breaking space ( )
code as a placeholder. However, this is a courtesy
provided by the browser and does not really help
you when sending messages across different platforms.
AOL is a good example of disallowing uncoordinated
HTML message code from getting though. For example:
<html><body><font
color=”red”><b>this
is the text</font></b></body></html>
You’ll notice that the closing bold tag
and closing font tag are inverted. Syntactically,
the closing bold tag should come first. Where
IE can adjust for this and guess at what you intend,
other browsers are less forgiving and will either
garble your message or, like AOL, not allow it
through altogether. It also appears that some
of the more stringent filtering in Hotmail and
Yahoo is also sending broken coded messages to
the junk folder automatically.
To be fair, there does seem to be a certain amount
of bad coding that AOL will allow, but it is best
to have clean code so as to not worry when your
message hits their threshold.
It is highly recommended that you use an HTML
editor of the caliber of Dreamweaver to compose
your HTML messages. Dreamweaver and other professional
HTML editors can help you correct your code to
ensure that it is syntactically correct.
Image Usage
In both Yahoo and Hotmail, the user has the option
to turn off images in messages entering their
inbox until the message is read and the user specifically
wants to view them. Make sure you do not place
your entire message in an image. Most spam blockers
prevent messages with no text from entering a
protected network. Yahoo and Hotmail also prevent
regular images—which could be used to enhance
your message—if the user checks the appropriate
box. It is highly recommended that you set up
both a Yahoo and Hotmail test account that you
can use to check all the email messages you intend
to send out. Experiment with the different filtering
features to ensure your email message can come
through all but the tightest filtering.
It may be useful to examine
what each online account does to preserve and
present your email, and how much the user can
control directly. In Hotmail for example, the
user has the option to not display images until
the text of the message is reviewed, but if your
message is put in the Junk folder, this feature
is enabled regardless of whether or not it is
specified in the account. This of course could
ruin any creativity put into the message for attention-grabbing
effects. Because of these features, which are
also implemented in the new versions of Outlook,
it is recommended that you do not use images with
important information on them unless it is also
in the text portion of the message as well. For
example, you would not want to have an image link
to a free computer and then not have it displayed,
without a similar offer in text form within the
message.
Body Tags
When sending to Internet
email clients keep in mind that your HTML message
is being displayed on a web page. The web page
may be using some of the same HTML code you are
using in your message; and, in order to protect
their site, these email clients can modify your
code. For example: when using background images
in the <body></body> tags of an HTML
message, the background image fails to appear.
Many online email clients like Yahoo and Hotmail
change the tags to preserve their own body background
image. There can only be one body background specified
on an HTML page. Yahoo appears to modify the message
body tags by changing the code. They input an
x, e.g. <xbody></xbody>
Hotmail appears to pass the message through a
filter whose properties are not readily identifiable.
Since there can only be one <body></body>
tag per page, other body properties may not be
displayed correctly.
Other attributes that are likely reserved to
the parent page are:
- alink
- bgcolor
- link
- text
- vlink
One way to account for this issue is to put your
entire message in a table without a border, and
assign your attributes in the table tags rather
than body tags. This will give it the same effect
while preserving the background image, text, or
link properties in these online email clients.
Doing so should not adversely affect messages
sent to other email clients.
Conclusion
Know your MUAs. Keep up-to-date on changes with
the biggest email clients, like AOL’s scheduled
introduction of its new white list regulation
requirements due this year. People who meet these
new AOL criteria will be listed as valid email
marketers and will be able to bypass some of its
default restrictions. Also, test-deliver your
email messages to as many mail clients as possible,
to account for their idiosyncrasies.
Email marketing is increasingly becoming a science
in and of itself, and only those who use care
with their email marketing messages will be able
to weather the current anti-spam storm.
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