Microsoft Outlook 2007 and HTML Email

Email marketers beware!

Microsoft is making another fundamental technology change that will change the way HTML emails and email marketing campaigns must be designed.

When you receive an HTML email in Outlook 2003, Internet Explorer technology is used to interpret the code and display the email content. With the imminent release of Outlook 2007 (scheduled for the end of January) the interpreter will be Microsoft Word 2007.

What does that mean? According to Morgan Stewart, Director of Strategic Services for ExactTarget, forms, surveys, backgrounds, CSS positioning and rich media are among the things that may display incorrectly.

He also makes an interesting points about the broader effect on B2B customer. Read his blog on the issue ...

One way to handle your email marketing campaigns until the dust settles with the Microsoft changes is for marketers to send less complex emails and direct the recipients to dedicated landing pages on their websites.

Campaign metrics are still available from the email campaign package (ExactTarget, Constant Contact, etc.) and you'll have the added performance metrics from your site.