[thelist] html Mail in Perl

[martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com]

Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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2 part emails are becoming pretty much standard for large companies
doing outbound email campaigns.

If you look at the x-headers, you'll probably see a credit for either Kana or
ePiphany who are the 2 big vendors for outbound email systems.

The reason for this is that clickthrough rates are *way* better for HTML email,
although it doesn't take into account that those who dislike it (probably most
of us) are *really* pissed off about it.

The other thing you might see is plain text emails with an HTML part containing
only a single-pixel gif. This will test your capability to receive HTML email,
so
will allow the site to (preferably) know whether to offer you the option of
HTML.
Alternatively (slightly worse), they may set your default to HTML, giving you
that until you express another preference. Or (worst) just send you HTML mail
only.

fwiw anyone buying one of these 2 will be of the size to have sensible
advisors, who *should* have directed the operators towards Seth Godin's
Permission Marketing. This essentially says that if a customer hasn't given
you permission to contact them in a given manner, then don't do it, and that
Spam is the lowest of the low.

In the EU, data protection is a matter of law anyway, and the EUCommission
is being steered towards anti-spam legislation, which will probably fall in
favour of opt-in.

Both Kana and ePiphany will integrate with other systems to register and make
use of your profile, so you can both set preferences and get customised content.

For example, if I register for email info from a wine site, it will quite
quickly realise
that I'll be interested in Barolo at under a tenner a bottle and Barbera d'Asti
and
Pinot Grigio in general, plus similar varieties. On the other hand, I can't
*stand*
New World Chardonnay - it's wayyyy too buttery for me. Theoretically, this
will be reflected in the content delivered to me, whether specific offers, or
non-
product editorial.

Cheers
Martin



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Subject:  Re: [thelist] html Mail in Perl



Adrian Fischer wrote:
>
> Heres my question for the day...Is it possible to send html formatted email
> from within a perl/mysql dirven program?  Putting the html into the script
> itself doesn't work.  I think you need to have some sort of header
> information telling it that its html?  If so I don't know how or were.

You need to format the email so that HTML compliant email readers know the HTML
is
embedded into the body of the message.

There a a few places on the net that discuss formatting HTML email. I hope
someone
else provides the links - I never kept any of the ones tossed out here for
previous
responses to this question.

A quick look at some of the spam I get, shows two ways to format the email.



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