Why Email Standards Should Matter to Everyone

The headline above will probably have readers of this blog take up a position in one (or maybe even 2) of 5 “email” camps -

1. the true-blue standards techos that say there is really only oneway to do email and that’s plain text and html (and css) should be kept to websites
2. the designers who love to show all their creative abilities, and have clients demanding html email newsletters, but hate the fact they have to use html coding from 1999
3. the business owners or marketing managers that wants to to look good and convey their brand in all its glory but wonder why they have to worry about something as confusing as standards
4. the regular readers of email and subscribe to newsletters that believe that a picture tells a thousand stories and want to see the product (or other images) rather than being told about it and doesn’t really care if the email can’t be read in other email systems as long as it works on theirs.
5. vision impared-readers of email that rely on support devices such as screen readers due difficulties in viewing the html emails.

These 5 groups are the loose communities of concern when it comes to html email but don’t be fooled that it is this classical carving up of interests and positions is straight-forward.

At the moment the discussion (sometimes it escalated into a conflict) about the future of html emails is being waged between the developers (programmers, standards experts, software developers, email client providers, etc) and designers.

Only yesterday a shot was fired in the support of emails standards and it came from Australia. The guys at Freshview (Dave, Ben, Mat and crew) are the project management and logistics behind a campaign to get wider acceptance and implementation of css standards across all the various email platforms. They have started the Email Standards Project and I for one are behind them 100%.

As a reader of this blog you will probably fit into 1 of 2 broad categories : either you are a techie-type that is interested in the details of this project (in that case you should head over to the Email Standards Project website to find out more details), or you are a business owner and really wondering what this has to do with you (then stick with me because this has everything to do with you).

As a business owner you may not be clear on what standards actually mean in the web or email world, but you should be caring what it means to how your business looks online. Like most business owners you will spend a good deal of time and/or money crafting your brand, deciding how to get your message across in a busy online world and communicating in a way that you hope people will buy from you.

All the time and effort that goes into this online communications must be doubled, tripled or more if you need to craft your communications in a way that matches the technology that your marketplace is using. If one part of your market sees a beautifully crafted marketing message and other parts get something that looks like a 3-year-old’s finger painting then your effort and money is being wasted in what might be a crucial sector. It is for reasons like these that you need to be aware of web and email standards – even if you don’t understand them.

Back in 1994 the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded as an industry consortium dedicated to building consensus around Web technologies. In 2007, 13 years later things are much better but we still don’t have consensus and designers must ensure that website work across multiple versions of browsers and computer platforms. There are really only 3 main areas to be concerned with full css (cascading style sheet) compliant browsers, partially compliant browsers and Internet Explorer 6 <g>.

The state of css-supported email systems (aslo known as email clients) is a lot worse than this. Have a look at the current compliance of the various email clients on the Email Standards Project or, if you interested in more detail, visit the 2007 Guide to CSS Support in Email that the Freshview guys have on the Campaign Monitor blog.

So as a business owner you might want to know what you can do about this (without having to learn CSS standards). Just 3 easy steps for now -

• Transfer your own email client over to one that strongly supports css standards (there is more to email than Outlook and Outlook Express and it won’t cost you the earth)
• Make your opinion known about what you, your business and your customers would like by writing about this in your blog or newsletter
• Grab the “I support email standards” image above and put in on your site or on your email newsletters.

Don’t let the guys who think that email should only come in black and white determine how your communicate with your customers!