Plain text email

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alex.barylski
DevNet Evangelist
Posts: 6267
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:00 pm
Location: Winnipeg

Plain text email

Post by alex.barylski »

How many of you use text only email?

Is it worth supporting such a multi-part feature in a newsletter/mailing list management program? I've researched many of my competitors and the feature is typically handled in one of two ways:

1) The program allows the editor to create an "optional" text only version - apparently this is bad practice as the email can be flagged as SPAM if the text & html versions differ to wildly. I have decided against this approach.
2) The program injects a link in the text version (with no body what-so-ever) to the web page so one can view the email as a web page. This seems simplistic.

I have considered the option of converting the HTML into a text version - however this is more challenging than one might think when the HTML version is moderately complex.

So given the options, which do you think is best?

My main concern is that of mobile people. Business people on the move likely check their emails using mobile devices which may not support HTML email or HTML at all in some cases. In which case, a simplified text version would be best, as even my cell phone can handle those and it's oging three years in age here soon. :P

Opinions?
matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Re: Plain text email

Post by matthijs »

Definitely add a text version. There are people who prefer text email. There are mail apps who don't show html email. Etc etc.

Why is creating a plain text version so difficult? Just copy-paste the text content, maybe upper-case the headings for a bit of styling and you're done.
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