I’m doing research now for a white paper on email and ran across this interesting screed on HTML email. The title says it all: Why HTML in E‑Mail is a Bad Idea. For those who need examples of how HTML is often rendered by the email readers that email recipients use, the writer, Scott Hacker, includes some screen shots of weird emails—the result of poorly formatted and poorly tested HTML email.
I’ll admit: I like plain text email because the message is important to me and I’m not willing to test email as extensively as you should if you’re sending out HTML email—especially one that has complicated formatting. Bates College does HTML email well with Bates News: very simple, small image header at the top of the message, which links it back to Bates.edu visually, short content blurbs, and deep links back to the Bates site.
Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?