Email geeks needed please

[phil1979]

First up, I don't have outlook. I use Tobit.

What I would like to do is paste a logo to act as a header for a branded email that I need to use as a template.

Pasting in a logo to a new email, however, essentially ads a file as an attachment, which a lot of spamfilters then kick out when I send it.

Can anyone tell me how to embed the logo, so that it's seen on my outgoing email, but isn't registered as an attachment, therefore making it more filter-friendly?

Does that all make sense? Thanks!

[bishbash]

I'm not familiar with the email client you're using, but have a look to see if has option for sending email as html.

Bear in mind that not all receiving email clients will be able to read html emails, allthough most will these days. I'm not sure if it will make much difference to how spam filters see the mail though, if they block attachments they are just as likely to block html mails.

[phil1979]

bishbash said:

I'm not familiar with the email client you're using, but have a look to see if has option for sending email as html.

Bear in mind that not all receiving email clients will be able to read html emails, allthough most will these days. I'm not sure if it will make much difference to how spam filters see the mail though, if they block attachments they are just as likely to block html mails.

Yes, it's automatically working in HTML. Thanks for your reply though.

[JohnnyPanic]

Also not familiar with the client, but see if you can use/edit/create a template or "stationery" as some programs call it.

[marshalla]

You can't.

Logos have to be added as attachments which are then displayed by the receiving client according to markup in the text portion.

You cannot control what the recipient's client will do with the received e-mail either - so if you send it to me, I will not see the logo as I refuse to let my client open any attachment automatically.

[phil1979]

marshalla said:

You can't.

Logos have to be added as attachments which are then displayed by the receiving client according to markup in the text portion.

You cannot control what the recipient's client will do with the received e-mail either - so if you send it to me, I will not see the logo as I refuse to let my client open any attachment automatically.

Thanks for the reply. Out of interest, what do you see if you receive, for example, a fancy email from Dell, which when I receive them doesn't have the logos etc saved as separate clickable attachments? Hope I'm making sense!

[TVC]

Host logo on a web site, insert URL into template. Even less email clients will display it and it'll still look like spam.

HTH.

(Worst 'I want to be Sanford Wallace when I grow up' thread ever.)

[phil1979]

TVC said:

Host logo on a web site, insert URL into template. Even less email clients will display it and it'll still look like spam.

HTH.

(Worst 'I want to be Sanford Wallace when I grow up' thread ever.)

Thanks - i'll give it a whirl. I think Tobit might be the problem - I need Outlook.

No spamming, though - it's a email newsletter that needs a visual inserted.

Cheers,
Phil.

[bishbash]

TVC said:

(Worst 'I want to be Sanford Wallace when I grow up' thread ever.)

Not all nicely designed email can be considered spam, I get several daily emails from computer companies (ebuyer, misco etc) that I signed up for, as I buy a fair amount of IT equipment for my job it's good to see the offers available. So I'm happy to spend 2 mins a day looking at them.

If they were text only I probably wouldn't bother. But as it's usually a few pics and some prices I find them easy to scan quickly.

Used properly there is nothing wrong with a nicely designed HTML email.

Have a look at something like http://www.mailchimp.com , it will do the hard work for you, and it's free if you have less than 100 subscribers.
I also seem to remember a PH'er has a similar type of service, but I can't remember who or what it was called? anyone know?

[phil1979]

bishbash said:

TVC said:

(Worst 'I want to be Sanford Wallace when I grow up' thread ever.)

Not all nicely designed email can be considered spam, I get several daily emails from computer companies (ebuyer, misco etc) that I signed up for, as I buy a fair amount of IT equipment for my job it's good to see the offers available. So I'm happy to spend 2 mins a day looking at them.

If they were text only I probably wouldn't bother. But as it's usually a few pics and some prices I find them easy to scan quickly.

Used properly there is nothing wrong with a nicely designed HTML email.

Have a look at something like http://www.mailchimp.com , it will do the hard work for you, and it's free if you have less than 100 subscribers.
I also seem to remember a PH'er has a similar type of service, but I can't remember who or what it was called? anyone know?

That's exactly the sort of concept I'm talking about - thanks. I just need the template, so that I can change the basic text whenever required. I would need to send using my own database, so I don't want to go through a 3rd-party mailing service.

[Mattt]

DonnyMac offers a mail service IIRC - if that's who you mean. Wizemail I think it was.

[bishbash]

Mattt said:

DonnyMac offers a mail service IIRC - if that's who you mean. Wizemail I think it was.

That's the one www.wizemail.co.uk

P.S. Love the parallax scrolling in the sites header. Very funky.

[DonnyMac]

Thanks chaps.

Phil, I've got your email and am sure we can put together something for a fellow PHer.

[phil1979]

Update....

Don's a genius! He's sorted out exactly what I was looking for!

Thanks All,
Phil.

[marshalla]

phil1979 said:

marshalla said:

You can't.

Logos have to be added as attachments which are then displayed by the receiving client according to markup in the text portion.

You cannot control what the recipient's client will do with the received e-mail either - so if you send it to me, I will not see the logo as I refuse to let my client open any attachment automatically.

Thanks for the reply. Out of interest, what do you see if you receive, for example, a fancy email from Dell, which when I receive them doesn't have the logos etc saved as separate clickable attachments? Hope I'm making sense!

They're still attachments - your client just doesn't shown them as such because of the way it's handling the formatting.

[Xenocide]

marshalla said:

phil1979 said:

marshalla said:

You can't.

Logos have to be added as attachments which are then displayed by the receiving client according to markup in the text portion.

You cannot control what the recipient's client will do with the received e-mail either - so if you send it to me, I will not see the logo as I refuse to let my client open any attachment automatically.

Thanks for the reply. Out of interest, what do you see if you receive, for example, a fancy email from Dell, which when I receive them doesn't have the logos etc saved as separate clickable attachments? Hope I'm making sense!

They're still attachments - your client just doesn't shown them as such because of the way it's handling the formatting.

Or they're linked from a webserver.

[Pigeon]

bishbash said:

Not all nicely designed email can be considered spam, I get several daily emails from computer companies (ebuyer, misco etc) that I signed up for, as I buy a fair amount of IT equipment for my job it's good to see the offers available. So I'm happy to spend 2 mins a day looking at them.

If they were text only I probably wouldn't bother. But as it's usually a few pics and some prices I find them easy to scan quickly.

Used properly there is nothing wrong with a nicely designed HTML email.

A text/html email needs to include a text/plain portion as well otherwise it is a right pain in the arse.

I hate emails such as you describe. In text mode they are an almost-unreadable mass of markup that you have to poke through to extract the meaning. I don't want pics: I want text, that tells me exactly what the kit concerned is, not a picture that might be one of any number of similar-looking bits of kit.

One newsletter I am signed up to provides its entire content in the form of one huge jpeg containing all the text and images, which is so retarded it hurts.

[JohnnyPanic]

bishbash said:

If they were text only I probably wouldn't bother. But as it's usually a few pics and some prices I find them easy to scan quickly.

Used properly there is nothing wrong with a nicely designed HTML email.

This tends to be my approach too. I spend so much time looking at code it's nice to have a break when reading emails. My text only e-newsletters rarely get read.

Pigeon said:

A text/html email needs to include a text/plain portion as well otherwise it is a right pain in the arse.

Yep, all HTML emails should be multipart, and you shouldn't rely on images for actual info. Blackberry have a weird approach of taking the text content out of the HTML portion of an email, stripping out the images & HTML whilst also ignoring the text-only part.

Pigeon said:

I hate emails such as you describe. In text mode they are an almost-unreadable mass of markup that you have to poke through to extract the meaning. I don't want pics: I want text, that tells me exactly what the kit concerned is, not a picture that might be one of any number of similar-looking bits of kit.

Just out of curiosity, what email client do you use?

Pigeon said:

One newsletter I am signed up to provides its entire content in the form of one huge jpeg containing all the text and images, which is so retarded it hurts.

We've actually been made to do this by a client. "We want it to look exactly like this, in these different email programs, without being corrupted or editable when forwarded". What about accessibility and usability? "Oh we don't really need to worry about that do we?"

[Pigeon]

JohnnyPanic said:

Just out of curiosity, what email client do you use?

mutt