Emails: HTML or Plain Text?

[Jon Lawrance]

I run an online service where customers fill in an online form and I provide information in return. The information I send is time critical for them in most cases.

Should I send them a Plain Text or an HTML email?

My fear is that not everybody can read HTML email. Anyone know the percentage of people who can read HTML email nowadays? Or do some people deliberately block HTML email for fear of virus?

Regards,

Jon

[Tygger2512]

You can normally send messages that contain both plain text and HTML - the plain text version will be seen by those who cannot read HTML messages. If you send the messages out in plain text however, I suspect you will be less likely to be filtered out by SpamAssassin, which uses the % of html text in your e-mail as one of its factors in determining whether an e-mail is spam.

Andy.

[hurricane.uk]

Offer a choice.

[reoplex]

i was thinking about that when i send e-mails to my "clients". I think since most of them use hotmail, msn, yahoo, or even outlook expreess - all of them can read html.

[wwb_99]

Use multipart/alternative formatting to deliver both to people. I know I get alot of newsletters. I dont read the plain text ones. On the other hand, it is cool when the arrive on my blackberry in a readable state because they are well developed multipart mails.

WWB

PS: Just got a few SA reports back from emails I was sending last week. The biggest contributior to my SA score was not the HTML message, line length over 78 characters or unroutable sending machine. I got 3.6 points for putting the option to remove oneself from the list in the body of the email.

[Sagewing]

Is there any way to send out a multipart right from Outlook??

[webgodjj]

Always ask for a choice. Then market seperately.

Side note: Outlook 2003 will be the first email client to have "view html" turned off by default.