Posted by Sam Sargent on 22.10.2009

Microsoft presents some Email Marketing challenges!

If designing & developing great email marketing templates wasn’t already enough of a challenge, (one we take pride in here at Bluewire Media), Microsoft has decided to use Word to render HTML in the latest version of Outlook 2010.

This means for the next 5 years your email designs will need tables for layout, have no support for CSS definitions like float and position, no background images and lots more. This not only provides us as designers & developers with a challenge but it also means non-technical email marketers will be forced to be more reliant on their web designers to ensure their emails are readable and not broken. Which is a real shame…

This screenshot put together by the Email Standards Project* is a great example of the progression (or lack thereof) of Microsoft’s Outlook since 2000. This is the same email rendered in Outlook 2000 & 2010.

But it’s not all bad – Microsoft have been listening and you can get involved and have your say by visiting fixoutlook.org.

It’s a shame my first blog post is a whinge but it had to be done!

*The Email Standards Project works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email.

Email Marketing Brisbane: for help getting your email newsletters looking great (despite the difficulties), call Bluewire Media on 1300 358 294.

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Posted on 22.10.2009 at 10:55 am . See other posts by Sam Sargent 2 Comments »
Design, Email Marketing, Trends, twitter, Web Standards .

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Really is a shame. What do you think are microsoft’s reasons?

http://www.bluewiremedia.com.au/home.html Sam Sargent

The move was actually made first with Outlook 2007 and many theories have been thrown around since then with security being common thread but this was posted on the Email Standards blog which comes straight from the horses mouth:

“The reason for this lies in the benefit Outlook users gain by having Word as their e-mail authoring tool; rich tools like SmartArt, automatic styles and templates, and other benefits found in Word 2007 and 2010 enable Outlook users to write professional looking and visually stunning messages.”

“I am aware of where this decision on our part places Outlook from a standards perspective – at the same time, we ask that you consider the benefits Outlook users get from having Word tools in their e-mail authoring experience.”