3 questions for email deliverability experts
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on October 15, 2008
Text/HTML
1. If you send your email as multipart/alternative and have a text version with wording that differs significantly from the text used in the HTML version, what are the likely deliverability consequences?
I ask because I see many big brand emails where:
- The text version is just a link to the web version of the email, or
- Some of the text in the HTML version is "invisible" since it appears as an image. So the text and HTML versions are similar when viewed by a human, but won't appear similar to a piece of software trying to "read" the text.
(N.B. Using images to display text also causes problems when images are blocked.)
2. Is there any deliverability penalty if you send just an HTML email but coded as text/html rather than multipart/alternative?
(Ignoring the question of whether you'd want to!)
Reputation and links/images
In a recent blog post, Return Path's Alex Rubin noted:
"...some receivers auto-enable images and links for the highest reputation senders."
I know that certain email certification programs have this benefit at selected ISPs. But...
3. Are there any ISPs where a solid reputation (but no certification) means your images and links are automatically enabled?
If so, this would add more weight to the argument that deliverability tactics are not just about getting email delivered.
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7 Comments:
1. No, they're not being that smart. Lack of text version or a minimal text version does increase the score in content filters such as SpamAssassin.
2. I don't have an easy way to test this. But, since there is a deliv penalty for not having a text version, one assumes that penalty applies to this method as well.
3. This used to be the case at AOL, the best of the best got images on. I don't recall for certain if it's still true. I suspect it is not.
I do not believe it to be the case anywhere else. Unless you're a sender utilizing Goodmail or Sender Score Certified, you're not getting images enabled.
Recently, we had a client show us an example email they received from somebody else, in Outlook, with images on. I do believe the images were embedded (yuck) in that case.
By 
Al Iverson, on
15 October, 2008
I'm with Al here.
In addition to his answer on #1, I would point out that even if they were that smart that there would need to be a bit of leeway given as best practice currently is to recommend the use of the alt tag for screen readers.
By 
Mickey Chandler, on
15 October, 2008
Ok, I have to issue a correction here. There are some hits for this stuff that I didn't think it did.
I just put up a blog post about it that includes the default scores in SpamAssassin's latest version.
By Mickey Chandler, on
15 October, 2008
Thanks guys for responding. This is one area I happily admit my relative ignorance. Appreciate you taking the time to comment. (Thanks also for the detailed blog post Mickey.)
By , on
15 October, 2008
about question nr. 3: I experience this with Hotmail (it also could be a bug). Images of commercial newsletters are downloaded, even if the sender is not in my contacts and is not safelisted. It's not happening with all emails though, only with the ones I have frequently opened and/or clicked.
By Béate Vervaecke, on
18 October, 2008
Interesting Beate. Perhaps a bug or perhaps a test?
By , on
21 October, 2008
J.D. Falk of Return Path emailed me to confirm that... "AOL's "enhanced whitelist" is entirely based on reputation, and enables
images and links." This is the only circumstance where non-certified emails would have links and images automatically enabled. (Note that recipients can override image blocking at the client level by adding you to their address list etc.)
By , on
21 October, 2008
