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Answer: Today, the vast majority of all email clients can render HTML emails fairly well (notable exceptions being older versions of Lotus Notes and pre AOL 6.0). So whereas a few years ago the answer to the question was rather complex, today it really comes down to message purpose, subscriber preference and multipart messaging. In our experience roughly 95 percent of commercial messages sent today are sent as HTML/Multipart.
- Message Purpose – However, certain types of messages can lend themselves to plain text format, including – alerts, correction/mistakes, confirmations, breaking news, etc.
- Subscriber Preferences – Most newsletter subscribers today prefer the attractive nature and usability of HTML emails. But some percentage of subscribers still prefer plain text. And in certain vertical markets like software programmers, some newsletter publishers have seen as much as 95 percent of their subscribers preferring plain text. Regardless, the key is to offer subscribers the choice of format when they opt-in to your newsletter.
- Multipart Messaging – Most email technology solutions send HTML messages as “multipart” messages. This means that the message is sent in “multi-parts” – in this case both HTML and plain text. When a subscriber’s email client receives a multipart message, it accepts the HTML version if it can render HTML, otherwise it presents the plain text version. Additionally, some recently upgraded clients, such as Outlook 2003, enable users to choose to accept HTML or plain text messages by default.
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