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Sending html emails

Sending html emails or newsletters in Windows Mail (Vista)

For this simple tutorial I am going to focus on sending an html email or newsletter using Windows Mail. This can be done with many email clients (Except Outlook that I know of) but the method will be slightly different in each case. If you are going to do this on a regular basis then Windows Mail is not the method to use. Please call us for advice on a dedicated newsletter and subscriber management product for a one time charge of £100 installed on your web site that you then control.

I am assuming you've created your html email and uploaded the images to a suitable directory on your web site.

There are many tutorials on how to do this online,or alternatively you can send us your mockup/image/ai file/etc. and we'll covert it into an html email for you.

So let's get down to business:

  1. Open Windows Mail and go to CREATE MAIL
  2. Your normal email creation window will now open up.
  3. From the top menu select VIEW > SOURCE EDIT
  4. This adds 3 tabs to the bottom of your email edit window.
  5. Click on the SOURCE tab and you'll get what looks like the code of an html page.
  6. Depending on your defaults (we are assuming you don't use "stationary" in your emails, if you do your view will be very different) you will see something that looks like this:
    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
    <HTML><HEAD>
    <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
    <META content="MSHTML 6.00.6000.16608" name=GENERATOR>
    <STYLE></STYLE>
    </HEAD>
    <BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
    <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT>&nbsp;</DIV></BODY></HTML>
  7. You need to copy your html between the BODY tags deleting what's already there, in this instance replacing the text in red.
  8. Click back on the EDIT tab at the bottom and try sending it to yourself as a test.
  9. You can try preview but bear in mind your images may not show as they are referenced by their full path e.g. http://www.yourdomain.co.uk/images/yourimage.jpg
  10. Now actually sending your newsletter:-
    I would suggest you use the Bcc: field (blind copy, it's not show by default, you can show it clicking on VIEW and selecting ALL HEADERS from the menu) for all your customers email addresses and just put your own address in the To: field. This will prevent your customers seeing all the sending addresses. This is the reason an email client is not ideal for this purpose. Be aware that some spam filters will delete emails where the recipients email address is in the Bcc: field. Again please call for advice if in doubt.
  11. Always put an unsubscribe link into your email marketing. If you're unsure of this please get in touch, we'd be happy to help.
  12. I would also recommend you have an "online copy" on your web site with a link at the top so the recipient can access the newsletter online if they wish to.
  13. Please let us know if you'd like any advice or assistance, we'd be glad to help. Contact us here.

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