Thank you, Alan, for your excellent ideas.
Have a nice day.
----
Tiziano
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan S. Harrell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, August 07, 2000 6:48 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [SaF] Formatted E-mail
>
>
> On 7 Aug 2000, 13:02, Tiziano Bianchi wrote:
>
> > I would like to send out an HTML-formatted e-mail to my
> > customers, but I am not sure whether everybody would be
> > able to read the message without too many problems with
> > HTML tags. My customers use a variety of e-mail clients
> > and might get their mail through Yahoo!mail, AOL, private
> > ISPs, etc....
>
> And there you touch upon one of the inherent problems of HTML in e-
> mail. No two e-mail clients handle HTML the same way. Many e-mail
> recipients still use e-mail clients that are not capable of rendering
> HTML in anything more than a clump of text that looks like garbage to
> them.
>
> HTML was meant to be displayed in a browser. If you want to get an
> HTML message across to customers, there is no better place to do this
> than the World Wide Web.
>
> > Is there a site where I can have my e-mail message
> > analyzed and that would tell me if there are any e-mail
> > clients that would have problems in displaying the message
> > in its original form?
>
> No. We can analyse your HTML code for correctness and compliance to
> standards, but as I said the standards are written to have
> HTML display
> in web browsers and not e-mail clients.
>
> > I could, of course, send out an HTML-formatted test e-mail
> > to the customers and wait for their feedback, but I prefer
> > not to do that.
>
> Not advisable. That feedback could include some very annoyed
> and angry
> customers who do not appreciate the added bandwidth of an
> HTML message,
> not to mention the trouble it might cause. I've known of
> people whose
> system froze due to the receipt of HTML. The last thing you
> need as a
> business man is to alienate your customers.
>
> > Thanks in advance for all your help.
>
> I think you should first concentrate on making a great web site that
> will sell your products. At first, use a text-only
> newsletter to keep
> customers and would-be customers informed of your business -- be it
> specials or sales or new items or anything else you wish to call
> attention. A text newsletter can be a fantastic promotional tool for
> you.
>
> As to HTML mail, you can later add that in as an opt-in
> option to your
> customers. Let them first give you permission to send them
> HTML e-mail.
> That is an important point with HTML mail. *Always* get your
> recipients permission before sending HTML mail.
>
> For those customers preferring not to get HTML e-mail, you
> still would
> have a strong, promotional text announcements list. And as long as
> they all legitimately subscribed to your lists, then everyone
> should be
> happy. :-)
>
>
> Alan
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
