How To Send An HTML Newsletter by Sameep Shah
Who here hasn't tried to create and and send an HTML newsletter by email. It
sounds easy enough. Create an html page, copy the code, paste it in email and
voila. Well it does, until you actually try it.
For a long time, I too tried to figure out how to send an html email
newsletter. I tried just about every way to send it. One of the ways was to
save the html page and then attach it as an html file with the email. I tried
just copying the source code of the html file and send that in. I even tried
saving the webpage as an email file and that didn't work either. After trying a
few more ideas I decided it's best to just use plain text until I can figure
out how to send it correctly.
As luck would have it though I did find out how to finally send an HTML
newsletter by email. I was working on an email comments form with ColdFusion, a
web programming language, one of features included sending data in HTML format.
I thought why not try it, it might just work. So I copied the code of an html
webpage and then emailed it to myself, and voila.
But had I really figured it out though?
There had to be something else in the code which ColdFusion added that allowed
the newsletter to display correctly. I looked at the html code for the email
and there was nothing different about this email. It was the same code as all
the other html newsletters that I had tried and tested in the past. Except that
this one displayed correctly and the others didn't. Odd. Why didn't the
newsletter work when I tried to copy, paste and email it. It's the same email
and the same code so it should work just as fine. Something was missing.
A couple of days later I went back to look at the code for the email thinking
that maybe I had overlooked something. The source code was still the same,
nothing had changed. So what could it be? That's when I stumbled on to a small
line that would change everything.
The line I'm talking about is the content-type, which is part of every email's
header file. I'd read about content type, but most of it had to do with XHTML
webpages. After a little bit of research here's what I discovered:
Every email has a property known as: "Content-Type:" which identifies the type
of content that is included in that email. The emails that you, me, and
everyone usually send are mostly text. Plain Text to be exact. That's why when
I tried to copy and past the html source code in the past it had just shown up
as HTML.
When I saw the content type for the text emails it was:
Content-Type: text/plain;
When I saw the content type for the html emails which displayed very nicely, it
was:
Content-Type; text/html;
WOW. I mean I couldn't belive it that after all this time it was that one small
line that had stopped me and probably countless others from successfully
sending html emails.
But how would you tag your email as html?
It depends on how you're sending it.
If you plan on sending your html email newsletter with a web programming
language, such as ColdFusion
then you can use cfmail's type="HTML" feature, which will automatically set the
Content-Type to text/html and display the email as an HTML Newsletter.
If you plan on sending it with ASP.NET, then the below line should clear
it up: YourMessageName.BodyFormat = MailFormat.Html
Or if you plan on using PHP then it should look something like this "To:
The Receivers Name \n" .
"From: The Senders Name \n" .
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n" .
"Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8");
Most, if not all web programming language include a feature which allows you to
send html data.
Tip:
Make sure the code or software that you use to send email has support for MIME,
which allows you to send non text emails, HTML etx.
So now you know the secret. It's not the code, it's the email's content type
which decides how to display your HTML email newsletter. Now that you know how
to send HTML email, make sure to test your newsletters with different email
accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, Google, etx). Each one of them tends to display your
HTML differently. Test, Test, and Retest.
Happy HTML Emailing!
About the Author
Sam runs Free Newsletter Template
- A Website filled with tools and information from email marketing to email
list building. Try out their FREE Html Newsletter Tester at
Free Newsletter Template
|
