

How to build a sweet histogram for your HTML email - saryant
http://blog.goconspire.com/post/64156505286/how-to-build-a-sweet-histogram-for-your-html-email

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wikwocket
Very nice. HTML email and horribly arcane <table> code are like peanut butter
and chocolate - messy to assemble, but you can't argue with the result.

When I saw the first pic, I wondered if this would just be generating an
image, or using complicated CSS (which can be problematic for older email
clients), but using tables to achieve a result that should work in most
clients, and show up even with images turns off, is pretty sweet.

The only thing better would be some screenshots as to how this actually
appears in various versions of Outlook, Thunderbird, GMail, etc.

~~~
saryant
> The only thing better would be some screenshots as to how this actually
> appears in various versions of Outlook, Thunderbird, GMail, etc.

Sure thing!

[http://imgur.com/a/C7XIX](http://imgur.com/a/C7XIX)

Outlook 2010, Apple Mail 6, Thunderbird and iOS 6. Any other's you're
interested in?

(Tip: Litmus is a terrific tool for email testing. Not affiliated, just a
happy customer)

~~~
leephillips
"Any other's you're interested in?"

mutt?

~~~
saryant
We send a multi-part message so that text-only clients get a plain text mailer
as well as HTML.

~~~
wikwocket
Thank you for doing this. I laugh whenever I open the plaintext version of an
email and it still has the default text of "Insert a text version of your
message here for users without images to read"!

~~~
saryant
It's actually one of our cofounders who wrote this, not me, but I'll pass that
along. :)

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leephillips
"The result is a bad first impression for new mail-ees."

What's a "new mail-ee"? I hope it's not a spam target.

Sending HTML email is what gives a bad impression. If you want to send an HTML
document, or an image or PDF file, send an attachment. If it's HTML, then, in
the unlikely event I want to see it, it'll open in my browser, and this
ridiculous hack won't be required.

~~~
wikwocket
We have this discussion here every time someone posts about email marketing,
and someone else says email is stupid.

Your average HN user does not statistically resemble your average business
customer to any degree. People here may hate email, especially HTML email, but
there are orders of magnitude more people out there who are thrilled by emails
full of cat pictures and inspirational quotes than there are of us.

Email marketing prints money. Well-managed email lists are often rated as one
of the best business assets a small business can have. The OP presents a good
way to show customers interesting content that they may enjoy, without
requiring them to open an attachment, or risk privacy issues by allowing
images.

It may be a "ridiculous hack," but only because of the ridiculous state of
affairs of rich-text email. And besides, most of what we applaud here on HN
could be termed "ridiculous hacks." :)

~~~
leephillips
I love email, but "Email marketing" sounds like a euphemism for spam. It may
"print money"; so may telemarketing for those willing to stoop to that.

"ridiculous state of affairs of rich-text email" : it works fine; thanks to
MIME, you can send me any kind of document you want. The problem is with some
people and some mail software sending out bare HTML without using MIME
attachments. But it sounds like these guys are doing this part right.

EDIT: I'm obviously not talking about opt-in newsletters and the like. People
who use phrases like "email marketing" and "printing money" generally are not
talking about these acceptable forms of email.

~~~
wikwocket
I'm sure that for some people, "email marketing" means sending spam. But my
comments were entirely in the scope of legitimate, legal, opt-in email
marketing.

Any tool can be used for good or for evil. I feel it's unwise to assume that
just because people talk about profit in the context of delivering content to
customers that they are black-hat. Plenty of white-hat people are savvy to
these terms, and these techniques are very useful when trying to run a
business while practicing "don't be evil."

------
eglp
I gave this a shot, but it doesn't instantly let me see all the interesting
data...

Could I have an invite? Or process your incoming requests at once (;

~~~
saryant
We're adding in invite code to the post, one sec!

