Help with Mass Email

[jbritt1234]

Not sure if this is where this should go, but here it goes.

Are most email clients set up to be able to read HTML emails be default? Or will some people have problems if their system is not perfectly up to date or they use an older version of Outlook Express or something?

I have been asked my company to start sending out quarterly emails, to a subscribed mailing list of customers, about sales and other offers. I have done some research and I have found tons of programs out there that will send the mail and manage the list, but not much info on actually creating the email.

I've found several programs for sending the email once it is created, it's just mainly the formatting I have questions with. Basically I just need to be sure that it is sent out in a form that EVERYBODY will be able to use. I need to be sure that everybody will be able to display the pics in the message downloaded off the net.

Anybody have any experience in this? Or have any suggestions on how to create the actual email? I know I can just whip up a generic one in Outlook, but I would rather sit down and have it look nice, maybe design it in HTML them import it somehow into a email.


Tia, Hope this makes sence?

 

[WannaFly]

well, you kind of awnsered your own question...the only way to do it where EVERYONE can read it is a plain text email - We dont use HTML email at work and I dont use it personally, and i know a ton of other people that dont.

You can put a link in saying "goto http://foo.com/bar.html to read this message" or something like that in the email, alot of client automatically hyperlink even it if is plain text.

 

[jbritt1234]

Hrm...

How does a HTML email show up when sent to a client that is set up not to support HTML messages? Does it just show nothing in the body? Just show the code?

Is there a way to send a HTML email that also has a plain text portion that will dislpay something similar to the "goto http://foo.com/bar.html to read this message" suggestion?

 

[kamper]

Most programs that send html email will send two copies of it together, one in html and one plain text version and seperate them with the multipart-mime formatting. To see how that works I'd say your best bet is to send such an email and view the source wherever it comes out. I think just about every mail client out there can sort through that format to grab the plain text version if that's all it can handle.

However, I would think that html coverage would be pretty good. It's not that difficult, unless your target audience is a bunch of unix phogies who read email on the commandline Quite possible that I'm wrong, of course, as WannaFly apparently knows otherwise.