Warning! Outlook 2007 Might Trash HTML Again

Stefan Pollard - Feb 5, 2007 - EmailLabs

So, you think you have ironed out all the kinks in your HTML formatting, now that you've had it tested and validated and checked and rechecked for spam content, bad code and email-client incompatibility?

Sorry, it's time to go back to the drawing board again. Outlook 2007, the newest version of Microsoft's business-leading email client, will make your HTML formatting either disappear or look extremely ugly. If you haven't spoken with your email designer lately, you'd better email them this article and look at our suggestions for getting around this new challenge to proper email rendering.

Essentially, what's happening is that Outlook 2007 will no longer use Microsoft's Internet Explorer engine to render HTML. Outlook now uses IE to read content in HTML messages and switches over to its sister Office program Word to compose messages. Outlook 2007 no longer uses IE, apparently because some layman users were finding inconsistencies between IE and Word.

Instead, it will use an updated version of Word to both render and compose. The issue is that designers are finding problems with the way Word handles, or more accurately doesn't handle, high-function design element such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), background images, and rich media.

The Real Outlook 2007 Challenge: Creative or Marketing?

Because the Outlook email client is used by 50% to 80% of business email users, any changes to it makes email designers, marketers and publishers nervous, especially those in business-to-business marketing.

When Microsoft announced quietly late in 2006 (via developer articles) that it was replacing IE with Word, email designers flooded industry blogs with protests over the loss of HTML functionality. The greatest howls came from email designers who had evolved attractive, functional messages using CSS. Outlook 2007 will have limited support for CSS.

However, email-marketing specialists have been more temperate. They argue that Outlook 2003, which expanded default image blocking and link disabling, was far more damaging to marketing efforts and forced marketers to adapt to the kind of streamlined HTML design that will perform acceptably in Outlook 2007.

A Critical Change: Loss of 'Alt' Tags

Whether Outlook 2007 is truly a game-changing event or merely puts a crimp in creative email design is about to be seen, but it will affect even HTML-light email messages and make it more important either to streamline your HTML design or to offer an attractive text alternative.

The most critical loss, however, is something that appears relatively minor: Outlook 2007 will no longer support the use of "alt" tags, which provide a few words of text to describe an image and which appear when the image is disabled.

Although it appears minor, this is actually a pretty serious loss of function. Alt tags help give meaning in an email where images are disabled, because you can use the few words of text in the alt tag to either describe the image, the offer it represents or the action you want the reader to take when the image itself doesn't render.

Losing that function combined with images disabled by default will hurt email design that relies heavily on images. If that describes your email templates, you will need to rework your templates again.

Here are the other functions Outlook 2007 will no longer support:

• Forms
• Background images
• Animated GIFs
• Flash
• CSS Float or position commands

Unless your ROI reports show conclusively that your program success depends on either having a form embedded in each email message or that an animated image really does drive response or conversions, you should consider lightening up your HTML use to accommodate Outlook 2007 users.

Doing this may give you an unexpected bonus as well: Your delivery, open and response rates may go up as well because you'll have fewer elements that will either break in an email client or trigger a spam filter.

How to Respond to Outlook 2007 Changes

First, don't push the panic button or order a wholesale revision of your HTML templates.

The new Outlook is scheduled to be released this month (February 2007). It will take time for the new version to migrate from early adopters to the broader audience of general users.

Second, if you have already had your HTML formatting audited or validated, or if you have streamlined the design in the last year, you might not have to worry. The Word rendering engine will either read your message just fine or alter it so little as to have almost no impact.

And, if you have already reworked your templates to accommodate default image blocking and link disabling as well as preview-pane use (see the resource list at the bottom of this article), you've done most of the work to manage any damage Outlook 2007 could inflict.

How to Counteract Outlook 2007 Changes

If you have already reworked your email templates to create a lighter, faster HTML format, you've already done much of the heavy lifting.

Here are five steps you can take to accommodate the reduced functionality expected in Outlook 2007:

1. Create a text version or rework and streamline your current text edition.

Your email program should create a text version of your HTML message automatically, but you should review it for readability and appearance. Some text creators merely dump all the text into a document. While you don't have the same graphic devices that make HTML so attractive and easy to read, you can still use white space and typography to create an easy-to-read text message.

2. Test rendering in Outlook 2007.

Test all email templates, including HTML, text, newsletters, stand-along mailings and transactional emails, by opening a test email message in Outlook 2007 to see how it will render.

3. Review your use of HTML across all mailings: reduce your reliance on CSS and other high-function elements or create an HTML-light version that does not use them.

This is a key part of any email design program regardless of Outlook 2007's expected impact. Validate your HTML code using the free WC3.org validator service, which you'll find in our Resource Center.

4. Reduce reliance on large images to display products or drive response.

Large images have become problematic anyway since they take up most of the space in an HTML message and leave relatively little room for text. And, with the greater use of image disabling, putting all your information into one big image means your readers won't see a thing if they view it with images blocked or in the email client's preview pane.

5. Use EmailLabs’ “Complete Guide for Creating HTML Emails: Technical and Design Best Practices” to examine and rework HTML formatting.

This free downloadable guide, which you can access on our site, explains the technical side of HTML formatting in easy-to-understand language and will give your designers the tools they need to craft a compelling yet rendering-savvy message template. Find it here: http://www.emaillabs.com/reports/emaillabs_html_email_guide.html

In Summary

The changes coming in Outlook 2007 will affect designers primarily, with the email community divided over just how much of a negative impact it will have on email-marketing messages. If you have already revised your email templates to cope with the more far-reaching changes imposed in Outlook 2003 and other updated email clients, including preview panes and default image blocking and link disabling, your HTML design might need only some minor tweaks. If you have not updated your HTML formatting for a year, or if you do not offer an HTML-light or text version messages, now is the time to go back to the drawing board and streamline your format.