Mar
16
2004
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Was asked about HTML email recently, so started looking around. I found that the css-d mailing list maintains an effective wiki, which covers the topic.
The page, HTML Email and Using Style, has some helpful background, stats and advice for authoring HTML emails.
(Disclaimer: I believe you should think long and hard before creating HTML email. I believe email should be plain text. Many others have made this point.
As a bonus, the page also has some stats on AOL version usage (AOL 5 is holding steady at 5% of AOL users). I put those stats in our BrowserStats page.
To complete the circle, i created a WebDev Twiki page for gathering best practices and info related to HTML Email. Please help me populate it!
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miles libbey March 26th, 2004 - 3:55 pm
A few other notes:
- Don’t use javascript. Very few clients will display it — there are far too many security hole that spammers can exploit.
- Many clients are now blocking img src request.
- Really think about how the user will react to the mail. AOL starts blocking senders if the sender gets too many complaints — generally complaints are generated when the user doesnt like the mail they receive.
miles March 26th, 2004 - 3:58 pm
oh yeah.
- Make sure your html is very clean (spammers do not — they include invalid tags and attributes to fool antispam services)
- Remove all your html comments — spammers use them to increase the randomness of their emails.
- generally, think of the types of things you see in spam, and do the exact opposite — make those antispam tool’s job as easy as possible.