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Everyone has their opinion on this one so here's mine. I love HTML email when I'm not dealing with spam or someone spoofing that they're ebay or PayPal and trying to grab my account information. Then there's always the people who write malicious scripts hoping that I'll open the email and let them run. These are very serious threats for those who aren't sure how to protect themselves.
I get HTML emails all the time from Barnes & Noble, eBags, Audible, Macromedia, Sun, etc. To me, seeing a well designed newsletter or product update is worth its weight in gold. These are like nice ads in a magazine that grab my attention and make me click through to learn more. I'll take this any day over a plain text email given the sender knows what they're doing. There are several instances where companies abuse the use of HTML and embed crazy objects and animations directly in the email....this is overkill.
The last point I'd like to make is that support for HTML email has grown tremendously over the last 10 years. This past weekend I designed an HTML newsletter for PolkaDachs and was astounded to find out that all of the major email providers (Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail) support it. Most of the major email clients support it as well and it's just a matter of whether the user has it enabled or not. It's always good practice to put a link at the top of the email that directs them to an on-line version of the email. Needless to say we've come a long way from the early days of the web.
Posted by dennis baldwin at November 27, 2005 10:27 PM