HTML email standards: the big interview

The Email Standards Project got off to a flying start yesterday. But what are their goals? What do they actually do? And can they really influence the big corporate machines behind Outlook, Gmail and other email clients and webmail services?

The answers come from David Greiner, who kindly took time out from the launch to address these issues. David and his colleagues at Freshview are the project's initiators and main evangelists.

What led you to start the initiative?

This is something that's been festering in the back of my mind for a long time now. Not only has the lack of standards support frustrated me on a personal level for years, but I'm constantly seeing the pain that so many other designers go through trying to get their emails to render consistently.

What really tipped me over the edge was the release of Outlook 2007 earlier this year. This saw one of the most popular email clients in the world go from virtually perfect web standards support to almost none. That one really caught me off guard. The web browser world was making leaps and bounds toward better standards support while the email world took a time warp back to 1998.

It wasn't just Microsoft that dropped the ball either, but Google's Gmail and IBM's Lotus Notes also have minimal support for modern web standards.

Today, email designers are forced to build bandwidth hogging, image-heavy emails with tables and hidden spacer images just to get some kind of consistency. This results in a bad experience for those designing, delivering and reading these emails.

Instead of sitting on my hands and complaining about the situation, I realized a much better option is to try and start a dialog with email client developers and work with them in any capacity to ensure we never take a backward step again. So we decided to start the Email Standards Project.

What are your main goals?

Our goal is to help email client developers ensure their applications support a basic level of web standards support. This baseline of standards was developed through feedback from the design community and includes the basic nuts and bolts required to consistently display a standards based HTML email.

Once we established this baseline we created an "acid test", which is a basic HTML email that allows you to easily see if that email client supports these standards. We then documented the results for every popular email client with recommendations on exactly what changes they need to make to embrace web standards.

In the short-term, that means trying to kick-start a conversation with key individuals from Microsoft, Google, IBM and Apple and working with them in any capacity possible to make progress. Once that happens, we'll focus on keeping the design community in the loop and encouraging them to move towards completely standards based HTML emails.

What has response been like from designers?

The response has been overwhelmingly positive. The web site has been live for less than a day and we've already had more than 100,000 page views and some fantastic plugs all over the web. We've also had loads of designers get in touch asking how they can lend a hand in spreading the word. I couldn't have asked for a better response.

Even more importantly, we've already had some contact with a major player in the email client world expressing their interest in the project, which is extremely encouraging.

Is there much awareness of the issues outside the design community?

I doubt there's a great deal of direct awareness about a lack of standards support in email, but there are certainly lots of people who are indirectly impacted.

All of us are sick of receiving garbled email newsletters that we can't read, ISP's are sick of downloading bloated table-based emails instead of lighter standards based ones, and the visually impaired are frustrated by the lack of accessibility afforded by non-standards compliant emails.

Just like the push for standards support in the browser a decade ago, moving towards standards support will provide a better email experience for everyone, not just designers.

Why should the email marketing industry support you?

That one's easy, because it will save them money and free up their time to focus on the content of their emails, not the coding. If those responsible for designing HTML emails could build them knowing they'll display consistently across all major email clients, they can dramatically reduce the development and QA time required.

Using tables for layout (the only way to get consistent rendering right now) is a dying art and something most newer designers aren't familiar with. As the rest of the web moves forward towards standards and away from tables, those designers capable of designing for email will shrink considerably, making email design an even more costly endeavor.

I understand this may make some email designers more money in the short term, but it's bad news for the industry as a whole.

What progress have you already made?

C'mon Mark, the site's only been live for 18 hours ;) Actually, we've already been approached by one of the big guys about this, but unfortunately that's all I can say about it at this stage. Our initial aim was to get the word out when we launched, which we've certainly achieved. It will be very interesting to see what eventuates over the next couple of months.

How realistic is it to expect the likes of MS to listen and act?

I think it's a common misconception that Microsoft doesn't like standards. I've spoken to plenty of Microsoft employees who 100% agree with what we're doing and with standards in general. It's really a matter of making that position filter up the ladder as high as it needs to go.

You've also got to be realistic. These guys have lots of priorities to consider when making these decisions and we're not expecting a service pack supporting web standards to come out next week.

I've seen a lot of Microsoft bashing since Outlook 2007 was released, but I really don't think that gets us anywhere. Instead, we've tried to do all the initial work for Microsoft and present them with a simple list of recommendations across all 4 of their email clients.

Of course, making recommendations is a whole lot easier than implementing them, but we're patient and in this for the long haul.

What are your next steps?

Right now we're seeing what the launch announcement produces and waiting to hear back from contacts at various email client developers. We're also looking to enlist the help from anyone who might have a contact within Gmail, The Windows Live Hotmail team, and any other email client currently sitting in our "Improvement Recommended" category.

Starting a dialog with the right person is the real priority right now, so if that's you, please get in touch.

More on design | Tags: email marketing, html email design, email standards project, david greiner, freshview

Sign-up for the Email Marketing Reports NEWSLETTER
Twice a month, free, packed with email marketing advice and all the posts from this blog.

Email:      First Name:     
    More info and sample

 feed | email | Twitter | Facebook

The main website for everything email marketing
Email marketing search engine
Introduction and email advertising basics
Service listings and sources of statistics
Advice on email design and delivery issues

Top 21 email marketing info sources
Outlook 2007 and HTML design
42 HTML email design resources

follow me on Twitter