I'm going to be sending opt-in mailings to the customers of small business owners which will contain special coupons, etc. If I used an autoresponder/automated email marketing service, would I have the option to send plain text emails, or do those services only allow you to send HTML emails? I'm leaning toward text emails since I don't want to risk a subscriber not being able to see images in their messages.

I'm also toying with the idea of creating my own HTML image in a web editing program, uploading it to a host, then just putting the URL in my message so they can click on it and view it as a web page. Would an autoresponder service allow me to do that? And would this approach be professional? I haven't really seen this done but it would seem to solve the problem. I definitely don't want to send the image as an attachment either.

What do you guys think?

zippy

Zippy,

Most programs allow you to send both an HTML and text version of a message. And anything is possible but will those you target click on the link to your custom image?

It is more about the message than anything else. If you cannot get them to open the email then it does not matter what the platform is.

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Lee Drozak
My Office Assistant

Lee has a good point! And, yes, Mailchimp has the option for sending both types.

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Lily Chambers, The Virtual Office Goddess, LLC
Author "How to Do Your Own Small Business Bookkeeping"

Aweber has both formats, too, for those that won't/don't/can't accept HTML emails.

Same goes for iContact.

HTH a bit,

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Jules, SunRise Virtual Solutions - WordPress Customization & XHTML/CSS Web Sites

Every email marketing company I have checking into will send html and also ask you to creat a plain text email to reach those clients who don't have html.

You don't have to choose.


Dawn

MailChimp creates the plain text version for you, based on the HTML original. You can make changes to it without affecting the original.

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Robin A. Holstein
Robin's Desktop Virtual Administrative Services
My Blog