What is an HTML Email? E-mail
MI Blog - Online Marketing and Sales

HTML emails or graphical html emails are a type of electronic mail (email) that uses graphics, backgrounds, photos and fonts not normally available in a standard email format. The formal definition is: "HTML e-mail is the use of a subset of HTML to provide formatting and semantic markup capabilities in e-mail that are not available with plain text." HTML emails have become very popular because they enable advertisers to present marketing messages in a more compelling fashion with imagery, colors and fonts that mimic other advertising mediums such as a corporate web site, tv, billboard and print ads.

 

Graphical emails and HTML emails are extremely effective advertising tools as they generate substantial click-through rates while providing the efficiency and economies of scale inherent with email. Companies can leverage graphical emails for advertising and marketing, customer service, customer engagement, and other uses where grabbing recipient attention is critical.


HTML emails offer many features over plain text emails such as:

  • photos
  • images
  • advanced fonts
  • quotations
  • headings
  • bulleted lists
  • emphasized lists
  • subscripts
  • superscripts
  • tables

Click to learn more about MetroplexInteractive's HTML Graphical Email services.

The development of HTML emails and graphical emails is more complex than creating a plain text email since they use HTML markup text (code) to specify how advanced features are presented. Also, developers must pay special attention to compatibility issues to ensure the HTML email works properly with most email applications. For instance, many email clients do not properly render CSS style rules and default to in-line style declarations. Attention must also be paid to the total size of the email (in kb). HTML emails that are too large will take a long time for the recipient to download, possibly resulting in the email not being viewed at all. Recently, developers have begun developing HTML emails that are easily viewable on both PC's as well as mobile devices. As always, HTML emails should include a link to an online version of the email in case the recipient's email client does not properly display the graphical elements of the email.