Outlook 2010: Bad news for HTML email design, but...
Latest posts | Feed | | By Mark Brownlow
The folk at Campaign Monitor have important information on the likely rendering capabilities of Outlook 2010, slated for release in about a year.In essence, the problems associated with Outlook 2007 have not been fixed. So Outlook 2010 is set to be equally resistant to animated gifs, background images, various CSS properties, etc..
Since HTML email design adapts to the lowest common denominator, Outlook 2010 would continue to place limits on design creativity and functionality.
The only "good" news is that if you've adapted your emails for Outlook 2007, you hopefully shouldn't need to make new changes for Outlook 2010. (Perhaps a designer can clarify that for us?)
The original issues around Outlook 2007 led to the creation of the Email Standards Project and today saw them set up an initiative to try and get Microsoft to take appropriate remedial action.
Microsoft's argument is that their approach (using Word to render emails) ensures that emails composed in newer versions of the Outlook email client will look as intended when received by those same clients.
Which is a solid argument if the whole world is using that product to send and receive email.
Oh.
It's a strangely insular kind of logic which I don't really get. The Campaign Monitor post has further details and relevant quotes from Microsoft staff.
But there's a lesson for us here.
Outlook 2007 (and its likely successor) don't support particular HTML design features that we'd quite like to use in our promotions and newsletters.
That's a big issue for email designers. But you know what? The email industry (not the email marketing industry) and seemingly Microsoft isn't that bothered.
Put your email user cap on. The vast majority of messages you consider truly important are nothing more than text and maybe the odd image or attachment. Mails from friends, family and work colleagues, and simple transactional emails.
Of course there will be exceptions, but the vast majority of "important" messages received by Outlook 2007 users look fine. A few bulk marketing emails may look a little weird as not everyone has adapted to the constraints imposed by Outlook 2007. But do these users care?
Are the protests about Outlook 2007 and now 2010 coming from people who are not designers or marketers? It's likely to be the key question for the software folk behind Outlook.
Let's be clear: I'm not saying our concerns about Outlook are unimportant or irrelevant. I'm a long-time supporter of the Email Standards Project and you'll find my ugly face adorning FixOutlook.org, too.
But the whole issue reflects the fact that recipients do not see our emails and the complexities of HTML email design as quite so urgent and important as we perhaps do. Otherwise we wouldn't be having this argument.
It might also explain why mobile device manufacturers have - until recently - been extremely lax about support for HTML email.
People use mobile devices to check their email for important messages. And marketing email isn't that important to them. So support for HTML email was perhaps never a great priority. (The follow-up to last week's mobile email post is out later this week BTW.)
So can we learn anything from the Outlook debate?
Perhaps it serves as a useful reminder: the format or the medium is important, but not nearly as important as the basic value of the delivered information. We need to make people care what their commercial HTML email looks like and can do.
Meanwhile, add your voice to the others at FixOutlook.org.
More on email design | Tags: html email, outlook 2010, outlook 2007
Permalink | June 24, 2009 | 16 comment(s) - add yours!
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16 Comments:
Thanks for the always insightful thoughts Mark, and for helping spread the word about this project. The response has been mind blowing so far, the #1 topic on Twitter, front page of Techcrunch and more.
As usual, I agree with the points your making. This isn't a big deal to a lot of Outlook users, but it will provide a better experience to those sending to non-Outlook users and those receiving relatively complex email newsletters (like your own).
If Microsoft can shift to a standards based approach for Outlook 2010, you'll see a lot more pressure on other email clients to follow suit (it's really just Gmail and a couple of less popular providers after that).
This will *dramatically* simplify the job of an email designer, and make building even the simplest of newsletters a much easier process.
By 
Dave Greiner, on
24 June, 2009
Thanks Dave. Quite apart from the inherent value of the initiative, the twitter-based approach is a fantastic example of mobilizing opinion and action through social networks. Intriguing to watch. Most impressive!
Also amusing to see how quick Twitter spammers catch on: already seeing the occasional "Outlook 2010" tweet offering adult services. What a world!
By , on
24 June, 2009
Actually, I don't really see what all the fuss is about. Sure, it's bad, but it's nothing different or new. If you've been using a correct email newsletter for the past two years, you probably won't have any trouble with 2010.
To me it seems this entire affair is just a knee-jerk reaction of a panicking mass of uninformed people. Still, it would be great is Microsoft improves the html/css support because of it.
By 
F., on
24 June, 2009
Hi F. (love the design of your cell cam blog BTW)
I think the protests are born out of frustration, rather than panic: frustration about how much easier and more creative HTML emails could be if MS just did what most other email software companies have already managed.
The frustration is compounded by the fact that it keeps email design years behind web design. So we're confronted daily with what might be possible, but isn't possible thanks to the limitations of email and certain email clients in particular.
But it is more about "what might have been" rather than any new problems we haven't already encountered before.
By , on
24 June, 2009
Hey Mark,
Pretty spot-on post I'd say. I'm as enraged as any other email designer to know that Outlook is quickly becoming the IE6 of the email marketing world, but it all depends on how you look at it.
The harsh reality though, as you’ve pointed out, is that it’s just us designers who care. It is indeed the content more than the packaging (and I’m doing myself a serious disservice here as I’m in the business of designing emails for clients) but it seems the business world using Outlook simply doesn’t put as much emphasis on the aesthetic design as the value of the content.
I realize Microsoft is being difficult, narrow-minded, selfish, etc. (what else is new), but at the end of the day it’s just another obstacle we have to deal with, just as we have in the web design world with the bastard child that is IE6. And I’m not saying the ESP have a futile task – far from it – but I do agree with your logic that MS dictate *a lot* of how marketers and designers operate, and we’re better to brace for it if nothing else.
Another point to consider is whether, by 2010, Google’s Wave project will see the light of day and become the much anticipated email revolution that we all hope it can be. Who knows, it might give Outlook a run for its money as it gets adopted in SMBs up to large corps, but again who knows (I’m looking at you, Gmail) it might throw up its own set of headaches and problems from an email design standpoint that have us all screaming at our beloved Google.
Either way, kudos to the Campaign Monitor crew for devising a fantastic Twitter campaign that’s gaining huge momentum against MS. If nothing else, it should provide a much-needed reminder that they can’t keep disrupting entire industries with their lazy selfishness. And bring on Google Wave!
Cheers
By Jon Aizlewood, on
24 June, 2009
Thanks for the thoughtful comments Jon.
The online design community is a pretty important group for MS. So even if it's a relatively small number complaining, I think they'd do well to listen. It would also have benefits for Outlook users, too, even if those users aren't that concerned about the issue.
By , on
24 June, 2009
Great point that Outlook 2007 (and 2010, it seems) doesn't break much outside of professionally-designed/marketing e-mails, since friends/family e-mails tend to be largely text.
A few thoughts:
1. I use Google Apps (Gmail) at work, and have enabled a labs feature that allows placement of images anywhere in an e-mail (i.e not simply an attachment). It is useful for knowledge sharing.
This feature is also available in consumer Gmail, and is useful for sharing "captioned" e-mails with grandma.
I haven't tested this to see if the underlying code generated breaks in Outlook 2007. If so it would be an example of Outlook-rendered-by-Word hindering innovation useful in friends/family e-mails.
2. Social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., rely on e-mail as their backbone (notifications of friend requests, new followers, etc.) Greater flexibility in html rendering (both by Outlook and by smartphones) could allow such notifications to be more useful. This is arguably a friends/family example.
One final thought, loosely related: For a reader whose company is in the business of relationship marketing in a narrow sense, complex e-mail designs should perhaps be avoided, anyhow, as they can appear impersonal.
By Rob S., on
24 June, 2009
Interesting Rob! I think MS will only be motivated to make changes if the user experience suffers. When "important" email starts looking bad, then they will act.
Perhaps we're victims of the fact that we all redesigned our emails so they looked fine in Outlook 2007 ;-)
By , on
24 June, 2009
I felt compelled to follow-up to my original comment as the irony was too good to pass up:
Apologies to all for the fugly formatting, but I drafted the email in an Outlook 2007 new message window (which uses MS Word as the writing engine) when writing that comment. The result, as you can see, is something less-than-pretty.
Digital marketing irony at its best.
By Jon Aizlewood, on
25 June, 2009
The irony indeed Jon! Very brave of you to admit to using Outlook 2007 ;-)
Word is a particular pain with its special characters when cutting and pasting for online use.
By , on
26 June, 2009
My (grey) roots may be showing, but this whole article and comment thread could probably be sent back 6 or 7 years in time, with email replaced with webpage rendering.
Remember when we were fighting the good fight for standardised webpage rendering? Lot's of folks just kept telling us "who cares about the niceties of consistent display. As long as the basic text information is readable on a webpage, that's all anybody really need to care about. Semantic markup and all that dancing macaroni? Only web designers actually care about that crap".
Deja vu all over again? Designers and usability folks have always been the canaries at the bottom of the mine. Their rantings are written off at first, until the problems they're talking about start to impact users, then the users are all over the designers about why their stuff doesn't "work".
So I think the point above is correct - until the problem is a significant pain point for Outlook customers, we'll be voices in the wilderness.
The part I think Microsoft is being most disingenuous about is they keep responding to this issue by talking about "needing" to use Word to generate the emails.
Frankly, I don't care what they provide Outlook users to generate the emails - there's no reason they couldn't provide at least IE's engine for rendering received emails. But of course that would show up the weaknesses in Word-generated email, so no go.
Paul
PS Wish I could find the reference, but certain of MS's own email newsletters have preheaders that say "if this email doesn't display properly or you are using Outlook 2007, view this email on the web".
By Banff Lake Louise Tourism, on
29 June, 2009
Thanks for the considered comment Paul. I genuinely wonder if we'd have this debate if we'd all ignored Outlook 2007 when designing HTML email. If their users were consistently getting badly formatted email, they'd have had to do something. As it is, we moan, then adapt, and there's no need for them to do anything.
By , on
30 June, 2009
Thanks for the article Mark!
I love the statement "Perhaps it serves as a useful reminder: the format or the medium is important, but not nearly as important as the basic value of the delivered information. We need to make people care what their commercial HTML email looks like and can do."
There are so many designers out there who unfortunately have to "shoot in the dark" when it comes to Outlook 07 (and now 2010) because they simply don't have an avenue to test their email. In fact more often than not, they are forced to follow "basic" table layout principles that may or may not always apply.
In order to help alleviate the challenges of this particular issue, we have developed a free online service for testing emails. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the project! www.emailonacid.com
By Michelle Klann, on
22 August, 2009
Thnaks for the info Michelle. I've added you to the list of design testing services here.
By , on
24 August, 2009
A slightly different point of view here, from someone who doesn't know the first thing about "email design" or "HTML standards" but very reluctantly spends most of his professional (and sadly his personal) life battling with an email client of some sort.
I work in a company where well in excess of 100,000 employees exchange email using Outlook 2007. Not that long ago we were using Notes and, boy, are *we* happy as Larry with our new toy! Copy and paste from all of our favourite (Microsoft and other) applications works fantastically well. My educated guess is that things will be equally headache-free when Outlook 2010 comes around, regardless of what standards it will support.
Bottom line on the above: there's a good number of very large corporations out there where 90% of the email traffic is internal and where there is a genuine need for relatively technologically challenged people to create "visually stunning" emails in, say, 5 minutes.
Notes didn't satisfy that need and I can't see Thunderbird filling that gap anytime soon either.
Ironically, from a friends and family email usage point of view my main gripe with the current offerings is much more around support of options and customisations. I use gmail, since I roam around a lot. Thunderbird can't get to grips with the label paradigm, delete ain't what you think it is and you can't customise the delete action to move your deleted mails to the gmail deleted items folder, Windows Live mail: ditto, Outlook 2007: ditto again. The result is that the label-free all-mail folder is now bursting its seams.
Apparently Outlook 2010 will allow me to configure a destination folder in my IMAP host for deleted items.
Hallelujah!
That alone will be reason enough for me to move to Outlook 2010!
Until that time I hope either gmail will give me the ability to filter or sort those messages that are label-less (so I can friggin' delete them) or I don't breach my quota.
See ... simple folk that just use this stuff have very different frustrations, and we more than likely outnumber the purists by a number of magnitude!
Not that I don't support the good cause of course. Just trying to provide a different perspective.
Met vriendelijke groeten....
By greuve, on
03 September, 2009
greuve...thanks for taking the time to contribute with such a detailed and thoughtful post (and a new perspective). Certainly opened my eyes to another way of looking at things.
By , on
03 September, 2009
