In the early days of the Internet, when most surfers were using Internet Service Providers such as Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe, all email messages that were sent were plain text emails.
Then, with AOL 5.0 came the ability to send Rich Text messages that allowed you to bold or italicize text, insert pictures, and add links. Still, however, most email clients (the software tools that allow you to view your email, such as Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, Hotmail, etc.) did not have the ability to display full HTML messages.
Today, almost all email clients have the ability to display HTML messages. While some organizations still send their emails as plain text, there are a number of advantages of sending your message as an HTML message, especially with the easy to use WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) HTML editors that are available.
The difficulty is that even today many email recipients either are unable to view HTML messages or have turned this feature off within their clients. To solve this problem, almost all marketers today send in a format called Multi-Part MIME. Multi-part MIME is a method by which one can send both an HTML message and a text message within the same document. When using Multi-Part MIME, you simply create your regular newsletter, announcement, or promotion as an HTML message and then create a separate text version. Then, when your message is sent, all the persons who can see HTML will see your regular HTML message, and those that cannot will receive the text version of the newsletter. Today’s email clients can automatically detect a MultiPart MIME message and display the proper message.
It is for this reason that one should always create a text version of every newsletter that is sent out. Without a text version, the message will either show up blank or show up as garbled HTML code for the percentage of recipients who cannot view HTML messages. On a final note, you can go about creating your text message one of two ways. The first option is to recreate the message in the text-only section by copying and pasting the text from the HTML message. If you choose this method, be sure to type out the URLs of each link). The second option is to upload your HTML message to your web site and then send a message like the one below:
Dear [first-name],
Your September edition of the Marketing Tips Monthly Newsletter is now available.
You can read it online at
http://www.ezmassmailer.com/newsletters/septnews.html.
Regards,
Jerry McGuire, Publisher
Marketing Tips Monthly
http://www.ezmassmailer.com