I have had some badly rendered emails appear in my inbox in the past. Regardless of the email client; Outlook, Thunderbird, Hotmail, Gmail and more. Companies like Campaign Monitor & the Email Standards Project should be utterly applauded for their efforts to try and standardise emails in a similar way to web browsers.

However, nothing, and I mean nothing can excuse mistakes like this. Morrisons are a huge UK supermarket and have a 7-figure online budget. They use multiple online agencies to manage their web presence. Presumably (and a little through experience on this one) Morrisons use an agency to send their email marketing. OK so it is wishful thinking for me to imagine they would test in every email client and ensure a readable mail for all the big ones, but you would hope that the email contained something legible.

I have had some badly rendered emails appear in my inbox in the past. Regardless of the email client; Outlook, Thunderbird, Hotmail, Gmail and more. Companies like Campaign Monitor & the Email Standards Project should be utterly applauded for their efforts to try and standardise emails in a similar way to web browsers.

However, nothing, and I mean nothing can excuse mistakes like this. Morrisons are a huge UK supermarket and have a 7-figure online budget. They use multiple online agencies to manage their web presence. Presumably (and a little through experience on this one) Morrisons use an agency to send their email marketing. OK so it is wishful thinking for me to imagine they would test in every email client and ensure a readable mail for all the big ones, but you would hope that the email contained something legible.

Following on the from the launch of the fantastic Email Standards Project on Friday, David Greiner writes a great article on how to cope with HTML email in the here and now:

“Boy what a difference 18 months can make! In my last Vitamin article I was singing the praises of standards based email and encouraging the use of CSS in your email designs. While the browser market has continued to strive for better standards support, a major player in the email industry has unfortunately done the opposite.

With the release of Outlook 2007 earlier this year using the Word rendering engine instead of Internet Explorer, my recommendations just don’t make the cut any more. I’ve decided to revisit my original suggestions and bring them more in line with today’s baseline. I’ve also had a good look at the feedback and comments from the original post. Getting your email to look good is only one piece of the puzzle, so I’ve dedicated the second half of this article to recommendations on how you can improve the chances of your emails actually getting delivered.”

Read the full article here.

Following on the from the launch of the fantastic Email Standards Project on Friday, David Greiner writes a great article on how to cope with HTML email in the here and now:

“Boy what a difference 18 months can make! In my last Vitamin article I was singing the praises of standards based email and encouraging the use of CSS in your email designs. While the browser market has continued to strive for better standards support, a major player in the email industry has unfortunately done the opposite.

With the release of Outlook 2007 earlier this year using the Word rendering engine instead of Internet Explorer, my recommendations just don’t make the cut any more. I’ve decided to revisit my original suggestions and bring them more in line with today’s baseline. I’ve also had a good look at the feedback and comments from the original post. Getting your email to look good is only one piece of the puzzle, so I’ve dedicated the second half of this article to recommendations on how you can improve the chances of your emails actually getting delivered.”

Read the full article here.

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

Sounds bloody good to me. And about time too. It was only yesterday a developer and I were reeling about the stupid situation we find ourselves in with building emails. These guys train and work incredibly hard to ensure pixel perfect design, lightweight CSS and HTML - all to ensure the highest standards of accessibility and cross-browser compatibility; yet when it comes to email we have to throw it all out of the window.

Enough is enough…join the cause:

www.email-standards.org

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

Sounds bloody good to me. And about time too. It was only yesterday a developer and I were reeling about the stupid situation we find ourselves in with building emails. These guys train and work incredibly hard to ensure pixel perfect design, lightweight CSS and HTML - all to ensure the highest standards of accessibility and cross-browser compatibility; yet when it comes to email we have to throw it all out of the window.

Enough is enough…join the cause:

www.email-standards.org