E-Mail Standards
July 10th, 2008 | Published in Email, Web, Work
As some of you know, I recently took a job with a company in Austin called Engauge Direct. We focus our daily efforts on helping companies communicate through e-mail and micro-sites about new products, special offers, promotions, and other forms of electronic communications. Specifically, we work with Best Buy for Business, Logitech, CDW, Advocent, and a number of other clients.
One of the daily obstacals we face is meeting the design standards to ensure that our e-mails show up, or render, correctly on all the e-mail clients out there. It’s no small undertaking and we are constantly haveing to keep up with new standards and clients that are making changes to their email platforms. The web based e-mail systems like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! are just a few the programs that able to change their standards and rendering systems on the fly. It’s has been constant headahe that we face day in and day out.
There is a group of people that have started the Email Standards Project, that are working to help set the standard for e-mails and e-mail clients. It’s an uphill battle, but they are trying to connect directly with team members from the development teams of the web and client based programs as well as spread the word in the design community about these standards.
If you are a designer or work for one of the major clients, please be sure to visit the project to read more about their effots.