What is Outlook 2007's impact on email marketing?

Unlike previous versions of Microsoft's email client, Outlook 2007 uses Word rather than Internet Explorer to read (or render) the content of HTML emails.

Unfortunately Word does not support the same design features as Internet Explorer so the appearance of emails using these features may suffer some degradation when viewed in Outlook 2007.

This change in how emails are rendered by Outlook 2007 has left many designers and marketers nervously contemplating its impact on email marketing and design.

This month we've taken some time to take a look at the new changes and ask what steps email marketers and designers can take to make sure the appearance of emails doesn't suffer at the hands of Microsoft's newest brain-child.

Not all doom and gloom

Despite the vicious rumors and rants about the design limitations of Outlook 2007 it's not all doom and gloom.

Most of the common HTML tags are still supported and Microsoft's changes mean that the appearance of emails will be standardised across Outlook 2007 - great news for designers who want their emails to look exactly as intended.

This is in contrast to the existing situation where emails in Outlook may appear slightly differently according to which version of Internet Explorer the end-user has installed on their computer. We recommend that you test the appearance of your messages in different email clients so you are aware of any changes before you press send.

Better the devil you know

The good news is that if you've followed the guidelines sent by an email service provider such as Pure you won't need to change your approach to design to be compliant with Outlook 2007.

If you're not familiar with these guidelines, we trust that now we've explained how Outlook 2007 works, you can look at which features of email design need to change so that your emails render correctly in the new version.

To help you ensure that your emails are displayed correctly on Outlook 2007 we've noted down some of the specific changes that will need to be made when designing for Outlook 2007.

• Animated GIF files – animated gifs won't appear as expected. An image will be displayed but it will not be animated.
  
• Background colours - if a table cell has background colour then we advise you not to nest another table inside that cell.
  
• Background images - Outlook 2007 does not support background images in either html or CSS but foreground images are supported.
  
• CSS - although Outlook 2007 does support CSS there are limitations. This means that the emails that will suffer the most are those heavily reliant on CSS.  If you do use CSS we recommend that you use inline CSS to ensure your email is displayed properly. We advise against using style sheets and style tags as these can result in unpredictable rendering.
  
• Embedded email surveys – Outlook 2007 does not support embedded surveys. Using forms within emails is not recommended as some content filters will either mistakenly filter your email into junk or block it, suspecting it as spam. If you'd like to send an email survey out then we recommend that you link to a web page hosting the form instead.
  
• Flash animations – these will just appear as a red 'X'. We recommend that you send recipients to a site to see these images. Generally we don't advise you to insert Flash in any emails as Flash is blocked by a variety of email clients.
  
• Images and photos - these can be used but remember to include a suitable image descriptions or 'alt text' in case images are blocked or need to be downloaded.
  
• Padding and margins - these may behave differently in Outlook 2007 so check the appearance before sending.

As always, the soundest advice is to test the appearance of your message on multiple email clients before sending it. This can be done by rendering your emails on a tool, such as that provided by Microsoft, which will show you how your email will look on different systems such as Outlook 2007.

The Outlook is brighter than you think

We may not be able to dictate how Microsoft develop their software but we aim to provide you with enough information to allow you to work with these changes.

We estimate that the number of people currently using Outlook 2007 is comparatively small compared to those using older versions of Outlook that are still able the render and support CSS reliant emails.

Although in future this is likely to change and the number of Outlook 2007 users will increase, we hope that you'll now have the confidence to design Outlook 2007 compliant emails. If you continue to follow best-practice advice, recommended by some email marketing providers, you've got little to worry about.

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