e-Newsletters in Outlook 2007

markwill2112 · August 26, 2010

I send out regular e-newsletters. Obviously I had to revert to tables to send via Outlook 2007 because of Microsoft's leap back to the dark ages!

Here is the web version of one I sent out today: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/edudev/newsletters/FacMed_prog_2010-11.html I basically create the webpage in Dreamweaver using tables so the formatting doesn't go awry, view it in the browser and click file > send page by email. This 'embeds' the page in the email and I also include a link to the webpage in case Outlook throws a wobbly!

Could Outlook cope with fancier e-newsletters this way? E.g. could I 'embed' flash, hover over thumbnails etc etc

Basically I am always looking at ways to improve them and jazz them up.

Any suggestions and/or advice on how I could improve these 'embedded' e-newsletters would be most welcome.

falkencreative · August 26, 2010

I would do a bit more testing in commonly used email clients -- not only Outlook, but Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. I think you'll find that the embedded CSS within the <head> section of the document gets stripped and your floats may or may not work. One thing I thought I would also point out... using tables isn't only for Outlook -- gmail and other web clients have issues with a float based layout as well.

I don't believe you can embed Flash -- I believe there are security risks with that and if you test it, I imagine that a lot of email clients strip that out. Also, I'm not sure if/how you could do rollovers -- I believe Javascript gets stripped and using a background image doesn't work in a lot of email clients.

I usually recommend people look at:

http://www.mailchimp.com/articles/how_to_code_html_emails/

http://24ways.org/2009/rock-solid-html-emails

http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters

Email templates to use as a reference: http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/html_email_templates/