Yep, you need a text version
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on October 21, 2008
Last week I invited deliverability experts to clarify some issues and they didn't disappoint. Mickey Chandler of Spamtacular, Al Iverson of Spam Resource, and JD Falk and Michelle Pelletier of Return Path sent in comments and emails with answers.
To summarize...
Popular spam filter SpamAssassin does penalize you for sending HTML email with no text version, or for sending HTML email with a text version that differs from the verbiage used in the HTML.
(See Mickey's post for the details.)
But text versions aren't just about deliverability. Some people have their email clients set up to view only the plain text version of an email. As JD writes, if these people get no plain text version to display, then they...
"...will be annoyed, and thus more likely to mark the message as spam. This includes a great many old-skool unix geeks (like me), who don't have a "report spam" button -- but do have the ability to block the sending IP outright."
As so often, there is a danger we forget the user experience in our obsession with the technology of sending email. Thanks for the reminder JD.
To summarize...
Popular spam filter SpamAssassin does penalize you for sending HTML email with no text version, or for sending HTML email with a text version that differs from the verbiage used in the HTML.
(See Mickey's post for the details.)
But text versions aren't just about deliverability. Some people have their email clients set up to view only the plain text version of an email. As JD writes, if these people get no plain text version to display, then they...
"...will be annoyed, and thus more likely to mark the message as spam. This includes a great many old-skool unix geeks (like me), who don't have a "report spam" button -- but do have the ability to block the sending IP outright."
As so often, there is a danger we forget the user experience in our obsession with the technology of sending email. Thanks for the reminder JD.
[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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1 Comments:
Until a few years ago, I used a Unix based email program that absolutely could not read HTML.
I have since switched to an email client that can handle HTML but a lot of people who started using the Internet in the early nineties are very used to text only email and are flat-out annoyed by HTML emails (they look horrible in text only email programs).
Beyond that, almost all ESPs enable you to send out both an HTML and a text version so I do not see any reason not to do so. It is very little extra work to send a text version, too.
By 
Neil Anuskiewicz, Business Development Director, on
22 October, 2008
