

The Bare Bones Essential Checklist For Sending Solid Email - evan2
http://www.sendicate.net/blog/2013/10/03/bare-bones-checklist-for-sending-solid-email

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chadyj
Thanks to Kevan from [http://sendsmarter.co](http://sendsmarter.co) for the
post. Definitely check out Send Smarter for great email tips.

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mfincham
Obligatory comment about how blech HTML e-mail (still) is.

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chadyj
Why is it any worse than HTML web sites? ;-P But seriously, doesn't it depend
on the implementation just like everything else?

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mfincham
When someone sends me an e-mail, I want to read the message they've sent. I
don't want their idiotic decision to render it in unreadable tiny blue
lettering to factor in to this. I don't need a half-megabyte PNG showing me
what their corporate logo looks like.

I don't want my mail client to have to rat me out to the sender when I open
the message, just because their template depends on loading images from the
web (apparently some mail clients now do this again by default? Madness!).

I don't want to parse the sender's message through a complex (and historically
fragile) HTML parser just to give them the opportunity to make the message
more difficult to read.

E-mail is about communicating a textual idea - the text is what matters. Let
me decide how I want to render that so I can best digest it.

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chadyj
We (Sendicate) agree with your points. We have templates that automatically
resize images, use readable fonts and colors, emphasize text and readability
on mobile (even with multiple columns and dynamic layouts). We also
automatically create a plain-text version without re-writing links for
tracking. We have learnt from the mistakes of others and tried to solve the
problems you describe. Email can be horrible, but it doesn't have to be.

The good news is that you _can_ decide how to view your emails. For Apple Mail
try running "defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool true"

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mfincham
Good on you for making an effort and thanks for the tip about Apple Mail. If
only this was more widely known and/or available on iOS.

A viable text/plain part is extremely important - it means my MUA
([http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/](http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/) is fantastic,
btw) doesn't have to try and mangle down HTML in to something readable.

I would suggest just turning off the HTML part though, it's superfluous once
you have a working text/plain 8^)

