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Effective HTML Email
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - March 02, 2001

Email marketing is on the rise, partly because of the relatively low cost, partly because there are so many parallels with the well-understood world of off-line direct marketing. Unfortunately, along with the benefits like reduced cost, the technology also brings a few headaches. One of the most major is the decision to use plain text email or email that uses HTML formatting i.e. it looks like a web page.

Chinwag uses both HTML and plain text emails for newsletters. Both formats appear to be well received, but we asked members of uk-netmarketing for their feedback on the different formats, and most importantly what percentage of people could receive HTML email.

Alex Chudnovsky responded, "As far as B2C is concerned my estimate (based on my experience) would be 92-95%, if you do HTML mail correctly, which means including the text version of the same mail in it and embedding (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2557.html) images into email which doesn't force people to be online to see these, then number of people who wont be able to read this cocktail is very low indeed, my estimate is 0.5-2%. Being smart with a simple link that allows to change format of the email addresses these customers."

Mike Austin shared his thoughts on the breakdown of people able to receive HTML formatted email, "I agree with your B2C figure - we do similar analysis on click-throughs for emails from our clients. From the various lists we manage, those which are more broadly based (i.e. a higher proportion for business addresses than a straight consumer list) tend to get a lower figure for HTML - roughly 90%, depending on the exact composition of the list. This is largely because lots of big corporates now block HTML and/or attached images. So even if they're running a top-notch computer and email package, the corporate firewall/mail gateway just strips off the HTML and they see plain text. Or sometimes the firewall just bounces the message back, so it's important to trap this kind of bounce and revert to plain text for that particular address.

The other factor to consider is that some people who *can* read HTML would simply prefer to receive text-only. This might be for several reasons, including download time and the amount of space taken up on their hard disk. So the best solution is to give people the choice. If you can't do that for some reason, you'll still get pretty good readership if you send MIME wrapped with embedded images as Alex suggests."

Nicholas Irving added, "We are having the same problem here, as we get our clients asking us if there is a magic way of finding out how many people can read HTML mail. I wish there was but to be honest there is not. The problem lies with the fact that we can send out a mail with both HTML and text as a multipart message, which allows the email client to decide which version to display. We could then stick a graphic on the HTML page linked to a unique counter, which then means we know the number of people who have an HTML aware browser, but this may require the user to sign onto the Internet to read the mail which we now need to know the percentage of people who read mail online... If they are using a text only client then there is no way to find out this out, as we cannot even tell if there are reading the mail."

Edward Cowell suggested a method to determine whether a recipient could receive HTML email or not, writing, "You can get it alot more precise by sending a multipart message containing a bug that is unique to each email user. i.e. each message contains an image link <img src="http://www.sending website/validator/<<users emailaddress>>.gif" height="1" width="1">

It would be pretty simple to write a CGI/ASP programme to record the request straight into a database which could then be validated against the email addresses. Or even just extract them from the log files 404 not found section and validate them offline. If they don't show up in your logs or in the database it would probably be reasonable to assume they don't support HTML."

Perhaps the better response from HTML emails happens because they are more attractive to the user, Stephen Pratley wrote, "It's entirely possible that these figures are a result of higher click-through rates from well-designed HTML emails. Particularly with the length of tracked link URL's, some text users have difficulty clicking through to a URL which has been wrapped across lines."

He continued, "After that, finding how much your users will tolerate downloads of graphics, or whether they really appreciate the 'attractive' design you can now have should be down to old skool DM testing methods."

Svein Eriksen alerted readers to another useful resource, "I subscribe to Dr. Ralph Wilson's 'Dr. Ebiz' email newsletter. His column has just dealt with HTML email, and provides some useful results on the following URL. It's a list of email packages and their support for HTML: http://wilsonweb.com/wmt6/email-client-summary.htm"

Nicholas Irving summed up, emailing, "Alas I think the answer is to give the user the choice". It still seems the easiest way to provide the correct version of the email is by asking the user, with the disadvantage of making the whole sign-up process more complicated. Still, can't win 'em all!

Online Advertising Meltdown

Software that filters out banner adverts is not a new phenomenon, nor one that has found much popular usage outside hardcore Internet users. The launch of a new product from UK-based Melting Point software allows ISPs to overlay their own advertising on websites that their users are surfing. Unsurprisingly, publishers haven't greeted this development with open arms.

Richard Longhurst asked the list, "Anyone had a sniff round this Fotino thing from Melting Point yet?

Ben Metcalfe replied, "Users have long been able to filter out adverts from websites using software such as Siemen's WebWasher. All this does is sit on the ISP's server and rather than clear out the banner adverts, it replaces them with adverts from a pool of the ISP's adverts. To me the question is more of the copyright issues created from changing the web page rather than that of the loss of advertising revenue."

Alex Chapman shared some thoughts from the legal perspective, "what this technology does is effectively reverse framing - so for an ISP to overlay the banner adverts of a third party with its own is potentially passing of and copyright infringement. Advertisers and sites dependent on advertising revenue are likely to claim that by changing what is actually seen by the browser so that it is not what the owner of the original website intended an ISP may be making and issuing copies without consent and without what may usually be deemed an implied licence. Copyright owners also have the right to object to derogatory treatment of their works and will also claim that the ISP (or its advertiser) is passing off its goods and services as being connected or endorsed by the requested website, contrary to the fact.

This opens a can of worms also for ISPs not only in relation to copyright and data protection but defamation - ISPs will have to be careful whenever they start exercising control, whether direct or indirect, over the content of material on a third party's site."

James Cridland added, "I really do wonder why magazines and journalists promote these products - even to the extent of putting them on their cover discs. These programs do nothing short of steal from websites: they allow you to get at the content without paying for it. Nobody promotes shop-lifting as a way of getting products you don't pay for; nobody should be promoting the same type of thing for the internet. Is it any wonder that online advertising is as devalued as it is?"

James' comments prompted several responses including, Sam Carrington who took a different perspective, "Advertisers use precious modem bandwidth to present the user with unrequested information. Is it any wonder these programs are promoted on UK cover discs. It is completely obtuse to compare the use of ad filtering software with shoplifting. Users are not required to pay to see content on pages containing ads, the advertiser pays the web site owner. Yes this offsets some of the cost of hosting and managing but it has been some time since advertising as sole revenue has been considered a serious business proposition. Is it shoplifting to produce a video recorder which filters out adverts from TV footage? Or even to hit pause when taping a broadcast from home using standard VHS?... Blaming these pieces of software for devaluing banner advertising is like blaming the web for inventing Tim Berners-Lee."

Responding to the premise of advertising as a sole revenue stream, Ben Hunt emailed, "Don't ITV rely on advertising revenue to keep afloat?" and James Cridland added:

"What a ridiculous thing to say. All magazines and newspapers rely on advertising as one of their revenue streams to keep afloat. Commercial broadcasters even more so. Are they in trouble? Are you denying that removing the advertising from a website is shoplifting their content? Are you trying to justify the use of these programs? By running such software, you're a common thief, nothing more, nothing less. It's not big, not clever, and certainly not worth justifying."

Danny O'Brien express a, errr..., different view on the overlaying adverts equals shoplifting saga, "And are you, as they say over here, on crack? I'm not, as a reader, in a contractual agreement with the content-producer to read adverts. The content-producer is in a contract with the advertiser to serve me up as an audience. I'm not a party to the agreement: I am the product.

Meanwhile, how long have you advertisers been free-riding on the content I read, without the obligation to make your contribution sufficiently useful or entertaining that I should actually want to look at it? Shoplifting my attention, without even thinking of rewarding me with something useful? Common thieves, the lot of you."

LINKS OF NOTE:
A quick round up of interesting, funny, useful and other links gleaned from the uk-netmarketing list, office gossip and other nefarious sources...we take no responsibility should you chose to click...basically, it's not our fault. Enjoy:

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