image maps in News letter Images

I'm building a NewsLetter and I want to use Image maps to direct customers to specific areas on the site. I've created the correct code for the map within my html for the newsletter, but I can't figure out why when the newsletter is displayed it is ignoring that code (no links). I noticed that even in the preview there are no links which seems absolutely odd to me.

This is done all the time, and just to double check my code, I pulled an old email I received from another store using the same methods, and their code is written exactly the same way and it displays perfectly when I received it.

Is there code elsewhere that is preventing this from working that I'm not aware of?

Umm I am going to be that guy.

Dont use Image maps. they will kill your Search engine optimization and make the site difficult to navigate for some.
if you need some encouragement in this check out http://www.alistapart.com/articles/imagemap/