What emails clients are being used out there?

Question

This is not "exactly" a programming question, but it's highly related. We are writing an app that sends out email invitations for a client (no, it's not spam). Their designer gave us an HTML and CSS template to use which is fine. The problem is that it looks like crap in Outlook 2007 because Microsoft decided to use Word (of all things!) as the rendering engine for HTML in Outlook 2007. I want the client to understand that they should design a "compatible" look and would love to be able to show some kind of statistics about what email clients are being used out there, namely that Outlook 2007 is growing in use.

Has anyone run across any white papers, web sites, studies that even come close to providing a view on this? I don't expect census level accuracy, but something fairly credible would be good. Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

My understanding of the generally perceived best-practise on this, is is to code for the lowest-common denominator. There are plenty of email clients with enough use in-the-wild that aren't great at rendering "modern" HTML.

Firstly, aim to send your mails as a 2-part multipart mime message. An HTML part AND a plain-text part.

Secondly, try to avoid using CSS or positioned divs where possible. Use table-based layouts and inlined-styles. Preferably specifying as much of the style in HTML where possible.

Try to keep images as inline IMG tags, or as table/row/cell background attributes only.

The email world just isn't anywhere near as up-to-date, and more importantly, far more diverse than the browser world. If you follow these simple rules, your life is going to be much easier than taking a more advanced approach and repeatedly tweaking it in order to get your content to render satisfactorally on enough of the common clients.

Answer 2

In absence of general statistics, collect your own.

Check out http://fingerprintapp.com/email-client-stats for a ready-made statistics collection tool, and see http://www.mattbrindley.com/fingerprint-email-client-usage-1/ for a write-up about it. Matt Brindley also offers this gem: "So far only Outlook has proved as popular as we expected, the iPhone was a notable surprise for our own list, with Lotus Notes making an unexpected appearance as well."

Of course, provide both text/html and text/plain mime types so that readers can choose which version to view, and keep your html extremely basic until your statistics indicate that you can get fancier.

If Fingerprint's fee is out of the question, you can collect your own statistics. Include hyperlinks in your HTML. When your CGI application receives requests from these hyperlinks, it can save the HTTP_USER_AGENT in a database for your statistical analysis. This method is not entirely reliable because some readers will stick to plain text, some will never click any of the hyperlinks, and some email clients will not include useful information in the user agent request header, but it may give you enough information to proceed.

Sitepoint, a well-respected source for W3 information, has an article, http://www.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters/, in which Tom Slavin points out:

1. Use HTML tables to control the design layout and some presentation. You may be used to using pure CSS layouts for your web pages, but that approach just won't hold up in an email environment.

2. Use inline CSS to control other presentation elements within your email, such as background colors and fonts.

Slavin also recommends templates from Campaign Monitor and MailChimp to get you started.

Answer 3

Raw market share figures will not help you much. When designing HTML email, the only thing that matters is what client your particular target population uses. This depends on geographical area, industry, B2B/B2C -- variations are huge in practice. In some industries (journalism...) you'll even have to reckon with a sizeable population using clients like Lotus Notes, which is notorious for supporting HTML barely more than nominally (shudder).

Outlook 2007 can certainly not be neglected any more, in particular if you send to business addresses, but with Vista on new PCs it's also got a noticeable presence for private accounts.

Return Path indeed have data according to industry.

However, in practice, a good approach is to follow "save" guidelines, in a lowest common denominator style. Outlook 2007 is not the only problematic client -- Gmail is also quite notorious for lacking support for a number of design elements others display just fine. You'll find that a surprising number of web designers do run a sideline with HTML email design (there is demand and it helps pay the rent). If you just start out, Campaign Monitor (an email marketing provider) has a wealth of good resources. You could start with their 2008 Email Design Guidelines. They're also one of those behind the Email Standards Project.

Oh, personally I use Thunderbird with IMAP, Gmail, and RoundCube.

(Disclaimer/full disclosure: I actually work for a competitor, in the loose sense, of Campaing Monitor.)