[thelist] Microsoft CRM & HTML/CSS email

jono at charlestonwebsolutions.com jono at charlestonwebsolutions.com
Mon Nov 28 17:18:36 CST 2005


I have been given the task of designing an html email to be sent out to
subscribers where I work.  I have kept up with the recent findings on
[1]ALA and [2]Campaign Monitor, and have started to read through the
[3]CSS-Discuss Wiki on html emails.  So far, I have not found an answer to
the following problem:

[1] http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssemail/
[2] http://tinyurl.com/bxvwo
[3] http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=StyleInEmail

When sending an html page out using Microsoft's CRM, all of my styles are
being removed, and junk code is being injected randomly throughout the
e-mail’s code.  Because I've used a table for layout (I know, I know, I
was in a rush...hind sight) the page is displaying poorly without its
styles.  Using DIVs would have allowed the page to fall into its source
order, but it's beyond that now.

Question:
Have any of you successfully sent html email, utilizing styles, through CRM?

Here is the page in question, buried deep on the server:
http://tinyurl.com/7crup

Do you see anything wrong that I've done that would cause the styles to be
removed?  Below is a snip of what happens to the e-mail’s source after it
is received:

----------
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<!-- Main Layout Table -->
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2180" name=GENERATOR>
</HEAD>
<BODY>

<TABLE id=mainTable cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 align=center>
  <TBODY>
    <TR>
      <TD id=top colSpan=2>Having trouble viewing this email? <A
      title="View this page in your default browser"
      href="http://www.sawgrassink.com/4800email/4800b.html"
target=_blank><FONT
      color=#0000ff>View as web page.</FONT></A></TD>
    </TR>
    <!-- Header -->
...
----------

Please tell me I don't have to go through and use inline styles
EVERYWHERE...which still might not work?

I am not the one sending the email out, so it may be that there is a
better way to send HTML/CSS emails through CRM that the sender is not
utilizing?  If you have successfully used CRM in the past, how did you do
it?

The person sending it out here copied and pasted the WYSIWYG view into
CRM, which has go to be a major No-No, but it was the only obvious way to
get the HTML into CRM.  Pasting the source code resulted in a plan text
email being sent with a bunch of code.

In the meantime I am researching CRM on Microsoft’s site in hopes of find
the obvious, but over looked solution.

Thanks,




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