Is HTML E-mail Still Evil?

Charlie Campbell asks: "My boss is pretty adamant about getting HTML newsletters to our clients; and, I'm pretty adamant about finding an alternative. I can understand the benefits in HTML mail from a designer's (mine) and marketing standpoint (that of my boss); yet, based on foreseeable issues with recipient software, mail filters, dial-up connections, etc. I feel that the risks outweigh the benefits. We've all heard this a million times... but is it now an outdated concern? Should I trust our client-base to be fully equipped for such a mailer? Should I worry about improper delivery marring our professional image? Is there anyone documenting the issue from a current-day perspective?"

Comments

In my inbox, most html mail gets dumped

[Mycroft_514]

before I even read it, so it if you want me to read it, send it plain text.

Multi-part

[pbox]

Repeat after me:

M U L T I P A R T

Technology is your friend, even if you don't fell like making sense of rfc822. Send both in the same mail.

And don't buy the spam filter argument. While it is true that multipart messages get consistently higher spam scores, if your content is not spammy you are A-OK. If your content is spammy you got a problem on your hand regardless of the TEXT/HTML issue.

Re:Unlikely

[b00m3rang]

For what it's worth, one reason that HTML email is more widely accepted is that many clients turn off image rendering and javascript and other "bad" things by default. This leaves the remaining message pretty benign.

...and pretty UGLY. Text that doesn't line up, placeholder boxes for missing imges, pretty much something I'd delete immediately 100 times out of 100.

Spam Debate

[Kalak]

Wondering if HTML will make your message look like spam? Well, I know I'd go here:
http://spamassassin.apache.org/tests_3_0_x.html and search on the html related tests and their scores.
They should tell you what the anti-spam community considers "evil".

I don't see a need for html mail - you want it to look a certain way, give me a blurb to get my interest and then link to the content. My friends do this with interesting links, newsletters I get are like this, I even view Slashdot on the "light" mode to get rid of as much of the clutter as possible. Then I go the the links to see more if I care to.