The release of Outlook 2007 was a hot topic about 18 months ago with regards to HTML email design. Unfortunately, the changes implemented by Microsoft were not an advancement, they were a step backwards in terms of how HTML is rendered (viewed) in Outlook 2007. Here's some useful information to consider if you're marketing to Outlook users.

Are Your Email Campaigns Effected?

Know your customers... if your customer base is largely the corporate market, then you're likely dealing with approximately 70-80% of them being Outlook users meaning this information is very valid.

If however your customers are use Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and other web based email clients, then you can breathe a sigh of relief.

So, What’s Changed?

Prior to Outlook 2007, Microsoft has used MS Word to compose emails, and Internet Explorer to render (read) emails. This meant that emails would display in Outlook with full HTML support, equal to that of Internet Explorer.

Unfortunately, with Outlook 2007, Word is used to both compose and render email - and Word does not have the same level of support for HTML.

Here is a brief overview of all the aspects affected:

Background images – background images in divs and table cells are gone (HTML or CSS)
Poor background colour support – adding a background colours to a div or table cell with some text in it is no problem. However, if you nest another div or table inside the first one, the background colour disappears.
Using styles – CSS support is very limited. Style will need to be placed “inline” and used in conjunction with tables for layouts.
CSS positioning – there is no support for CSS positioning at all. Tables are the only way to do this with Outlook 2007.
Forms – it’s never been advised to use form elements in emails, however with the new version of Outlook, if the <form> tag is detected, the email will not be rendered at all.
Animated GIF’s – many email marketers use animated GIF’s very effectively to draw attention and maximise space in email. Unfortunately, Outlook 2007 will only display a static image or if the image is animated the first frame will only display.
Flash or plug-ins – once again, this is not something we recommend using in emails, however with Outlook 2007 plug-ins such as Flash (*.swf) or movie files (.mpeg) will no longer be supported.
Image alt tags – alt tags display a text description of an image, something that is very important when images aren’t displayed in emails. Unfortunately, alt tags are no longer supported, so images may require captions in order to have a description.

What Can You Do?

Microsoft is providing a HTML and CSS Validator Tool to help you validate your HTML and CSS using some of the most popular Web developing tools such as Dreamweaver. You can download the tool here.

Recommendations

Overall, you need to keep it simple. Don't go putting flash, forms or other html attributes in your templates as a large portion of your audience won't see any of those components. Here are a few tips...

focus on the content - simplify your designs and focus mostly on the content;
don't send emails with flash, movies, forms etc. Rather, you can simply place links to these things in your emails and host them on webpages where you can be confident they'll work and look right!
always include a web version link - your campaigns should always have a link to a hosted web version of the emails (especially for Lotus Notes users)
test thoroughly - send test emails to the email clients that your customers use to ensure they are viewing as intended.

How Can We Help?

Digital Dialogue provides a full suite of design, development, campaign management and online strategy services. If you require any assistance with your email marketing, web development or campaign strategy, please don’t hesitate to give us a call.

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email This

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry