gingabox:
gjh42, it wasn't ignored, linnix answered that objection on the first page, as have I. Business's thrive by reaching customers and convincing them to buy. If even 5% of the email receivers object to receiving HTML mail is basically irrelevant to whether or not sending the HTML mail is the best way to spur increased revenue from the other 95%. As RodG has abundantly pointed out, those who object to HTML mail will A:) send them to the spam box, B:) disregard them or C:) unsubscribe and possibly stop doing business (although that is an extreme example). Those are options that people have, so no, he is not "eliminating all choice for them",** this isn't a violation of a person's body for crying out loud**. Then WHY make such a big deal out of it by FORCING all clients to receive HTML formatted e-mails?? or better yet, if you TRULY believe that your customers have selected text BY ACCIDENT, whey not sen an e-mail out asking them if they would like you to change it?? You ARE eliminating your customer's choice if you MAKE them accept HTML formatted e-mails. Now they may not stop shopping in your tore, but they may unsubscribe to your mailing list.. I assume this is NOT a desired effect? You would rather that they NOT get the information at all if they CHOOSE to receive the information in plain text format??
Also MANY people disable HTML mail formats in their e-mail clients so even if you FORCE them to receive HTML formatted e-mail, they will not see your pretty e-mail. My Hotmail account BY DEFAULT disables links and images in messages unless I say I want to see the images and links in this ONE message or for ALL messages from the sender..
At work our Outlook clients are configured to disable image sin e-mail unless we enable them.. Then images will be displayed for as long as I am viewing that message. Once I move to a new message and go back to that same message I must AGAIN explicitly enable images..
The point is that you and linnix are trying to force your customer's to see your e-mails in a format that many will NOT see as you intended because their networks or e-mail clients don't allow it. Also (based on your responses here) you both seem to be ignoring that some people MAY NOT want to see your e-mails in the format in which you are sending it.. If it's not a big deal then hy not simply change the settings for those who have complained (and are apparently too lazy to change their OWN settings) and leave the rest of your customers alone instead of the extreme response you are endorsing... The folks here in this thread have responded in the manner they have responded because in a nutshell they are trying to say that this is a BAD idea and the wrong response to the situation...
It appears that both you and linnix are hell bent that ALL of your customers want this based on complaints from a few customers.. Seriously ALL of your customers called and asked about this??? IMHO your logic/reasons for this extreme response seems more anecdotal than factual..
But anyway you all were asking for facts and such so I decided to provide a few. The US Spam laws do not explicitly state that you can't force folks to receive HTML formatted e-mails, but there is language in the laws which could be applied to a situation where a customer signed up for a newsletter with certain specifications (e-mail formats, etc) and those specifications are ignored. Please rad the laws for yourself and do consult an attorney. Personally my clients all err on the side of caution.. Anyway I posted other useful information I found in case anyone else runs into this thread. I hope they will give this a bit of thought before going down this slippery slope..
Using HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. However, most SPAM is also HTML-formatted as well; permission-based and SPAM HTML messages can often be difficult to differentiate in the mind of the recipient. If you do send HTML, it is important to always send a plain-text alternative message (also called text/HTML multi-part MIME format).
In recent testing, we discovered that HTML emails actually bounced more often than text-based messages.
Plain Text vs. HTML Email Deliverability HTML Text Bounce Rate 2.30% 1.15% Open Rate 2.03% 4.70%
What You Need to Understand: HTML email gets rejected by ISPs and SPAM filters twice as often as plain-text email.
Bounce Rate Source: 2004 Study of over one million email messages by AWeber Systems, Inc.
Open Rate Source: MarketingSherpa 2005.> 1. >
- Send Legitimate Content
Many ISPs filter email based on the content that appears within the message text. Therefore, you should be very careful when creating the copy for your email marketing messages. The following guidelines should be kept in mind:
Website URLs: Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send SPAM, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be blocked or filtered.
Words/phrases: Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid topics often found in SPAM such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography. If you do need to use words that might be filtered, don't attempt to obfuscate words with extra characters or odd spelling; you'll just make your messages appear more like SPAM.
Images: Avoid creating messages that are made up entirely of images. Use images sparingly, if at all. Much open-rate tracking technology uses images to calculate the number of opened messages. You may choose to disable this kind of tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.
Attachments: With viruses running rampant and spreading through the malicious email attachments, many users are wary of attached documents. It's usually better to use a website URL to link to files; this will eliminate fear of attachments on the part of recipients and also reduce the overall message size.
How to Protect Yourself Against Vulnerabilities in Email Clients
Email is one of the most widely used applications on the Internet due to its convenience, cost effectiveness, and time saving ability. Because of its ubiquitous capability it can be left open to many different types of vulnerability.
There are multiple ways that hackers can attack your email clients. Some of these methods include distribution of malware such as spyware, adware, Trojans, and viruses, to name a few types. Other attacks on your email client can include phishing, spam that is laced with malware, and denial of service attacks which are the result of sending a massive amount of messages to a server causing it to crash. Attacks can also cause a lot of damage to your other applications, data, and ultimately the PC operating system itself.
