Should we bid farewell to text?
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow
Not literally of course. I mean the text-only component of those emails that go out in two versions: HTML and text.
The assumption has always been that HTML emails should go out accompanied by a text-only alternative. The latter hides behind-the-scenes and only gets displayed if the receiving software finds itself unable or unwilling to display the HTML version. (See here for an explanation of how this all works.)
But research by Listrak suggests that this scenario is getting rarer by the day. They make the guarded suggestion that the text version is increasingly less important, presumably as the use of HTML-unfriendly email software declines.
Does this mean it's time to give the text version the old heave ho?
No. As long as some people can't read HTML emails, it's worth doing. But you certainly might reconsider how much time and effort you put into that text alternative...
More on format | Tags: email marketing, mime, html email, email format
The assumption has always been that HTML emails should go out accompanied by a text-only alternative. The latter hides behind-the-scenes and only gets displayed if the receiving software finds itself unable or unwilling to display the HTML version. (See here for an explanation of how this all works.)
But research by Listrak suggests that this scenario is getting rarer by the day. They make the guarded suggestion that the text version is increasingly less important, presumably as the use of HTML-unfriendly email software declines.
Does this mean it's time to give the text version the old heave ho?
No. As long as some people can't read HTML emails, it's worth doing. But you certainly might reconsider how much time and effort you put into that text alternative...
More on format | Tags: email marketing, mime, html email, email format
Permalink | January 21, 2007 |
1 comment(s)
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1 Comments:
You're very right Mark,
Another reason you may not want to abandon your text version is what happens when your multipart mime email is delivered to a bulk folder. A quick test of Outlook 2007 seems to display the text version of your email if routed to the junk folder. Not an optimal situation, but many readers do still look in their junk folders to find mis-classified emails.
By 
stefan, on
26 January, 2007
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