Email production

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The term email production is used in

web designers.[1]

The production of an email would appear to be a simple task; one starts with a picture of the advertisement to be emailed - usually in JPEG, GIF, or PSD format - and transforms it into another medium (HTML). The act of making this transformation would also appear to overlap with web design itself, as the advertising email is basically a small, one-page HTML application.

However, the medium over which this page is typically rendered is significantly different from the standard browser model in several important ways, each of which distinguish email production from standard webpage coding. First, the email equivalent of the

spam email problem.[3][4][5]

The increasing struggle of legitimate advertisers to distinguish their message from spam emails makes email production engineers being familiar with the latest anti-spam requirements more critical. Such familiarity includes not only an understanding of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and its requirements, but also an understanding of how to construct advertisements such that they do not trigger SPAM scores.

The rapid pace of email client development [6] requires an even more attentive eye for detail in email production than for web. The recent introduction - and even more recent rise to prominence - of phone-based email clients [7] like the BlackBerry or the iPhone is making the field even more challenging. This advancement, coupled with the lack of standards, requires that an email production engineer be familiar with the concept of elegant degradation, as commonly intended rendering of one's product will fail at least partially. The reader will note that this requires a very different design philosophy from webpage coding, in which the ultimate coding goal - to ensure 100% compatibility with all available rendering media - is actually attainable. There are several tools now available, such as Litmus.com and EmailonAcid.com, to help preview how an email will render in multiple email clients and mobile devices.

As a result of these other differences, the

best practices associated with email production is very different from that associated with webpage coding. For instance, the tableless web design which is often considered the gold standard for internet applications [8] is for email production purposes hopelessly reliant upon W3C standards that are rarely met by today's most common email clients.[9] In practice, therefore, the use of tables is a fundamental requirement of proper technique for email production,[8]
in order to ensure that emails are rendered to their recipient with some degree of control.

References

  1. ^ Source: Email Production Archived 2008-04-11 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ "Email Standards Project". Archived from the original on 2017-12-06. Retrieved 2008-04-21.
  3. ^ Forbes, "Why the SEC can't stop Spam," 3/08/2007
  4. ^ International Herald Tribune, "'Bad guys are winning' despite fight against spam," 12/06/2006
  5. ^ PC World, "Crafty Spam Outsmarts Gmail's Filters," 3/10/2008
  6. ^ Atergic, "Email Client Development",16/07/2019
  7. ^ ITProPortal, "Best email client for Android 2021" 31/03/2021
  8. ^ a b Campaign Monitor, "Ask a Designer: Tables or Divs for Email?" 29/04/2019
  9. ^ World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) email standards draft
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