HTML email newsletters and Mac

[warezcat]

Now we have migrated fully over to OS X everything, we have realised that Office 2011 doesn't support the same 'insert HTML text file' to embed HTML newsletter.

Having read up about it, it would seem that HTML embedded emails are frowned upon. What alternative is there to achieve the same thing? I mean if you aren't sending an embedded HTML newsletter then how do you get your marketing out there?

Please don't suggest just having an attachment, web based or anything other than specifically an embedded email. One workaround is to use Safari and Mail.app by viewing the Safari page and using File\Mail contents of this page. Hey presto it embeds the HTML into a new email. However when sent to a windows based PC the images don't download properly.

I get newsletters from a few reputable sources, what do they do? I mean, when we were Windows based we had no probs, now using Macs we do.

Cheers.

 

[citizenzen]

Having read up about it, it would seem that HTML embedded emails are frowned upon.

They may be frowned upon, but they're a fact of life and not going anywhere soon. I say embrace it. Use it. Make them your friend.

One tool that I've found helpful is Thunderbird. It allows you to easily paste HTML code, which sounds similar to your previous method. Other than that, tables, absolute paths and in-line CSS are the rule around here... opposite of what you'd normally do for the web.

 

[design-is]

You could check out services like MailChimp or Campaign Monitor. Both facilitate the sending of email marketing and even supply some free, safe, templates that you can take, adapt and send yourself if you like.

 

[miles01110]

Having read up about it, it would seem that HTML embedded emails are frowned upon. What alternative is there to achieve the same thing? I mean if you aren't sending an embedded HTML newsletter then how do you get your marketing out there?

A text e-mail?

i never understand why people lose sleep over this. The two main audiences that receive your HTML e-mails are:

1) People who have their client set to display HTML "as markup." These people don't really care that your e-mail is HTML.

2) People that have their client set to display all messages as plain text. These people will see your message as a series of brackets, slashes, and mumble jumble. Unfortunately there's nothing you can do about this, since display of HTML in a client is controlled at the destination, not at the source.

So, given that you cannot control how an HTML message will be displayed, the best bet as far as formatting goes is to send a plain-text e-mail with simple formatting, link to a web page, or don't send out your e-mail at all.

 

[definitive]

as stated above, you can use services such as mailchimp to send out html-based newsletters. there's also free scripts that you can use on your own called dada mail, and phplist i believe. only thing with them is that they're not for everyone, meaning that if you don't know your way around php, etc., then you might have to spend some time learning how to use them. there's also the problem you may run in to with your host where they may suspect you sending out spam emails if you have too many people to send the newsletter to. this is why professional companies that specialize in mass mail communications might be better.

 

[michaelshoup]

Simple Copy / Paste

One simple way to get HTML into an email in Outlook 2011 for a Mac is to just build your email as an html page [use Dreamweaver or whatever you've got], view that page in a browser like Safari or Firefox, then just do Command + A to select all, Command + C to copy the page contents... switch over to a blank email composition in Outlook and Command + V to paste.

I know, seems crazy simple, but it'll copy down the HTML contents of the page as an HTML email. Now granted, this is assuming you've made sure to only use email safe HTML markup [CSS not usually supported, etc etc] but it's a quick and dirty solution if using something like MailChimp to send newsletters isn't up your alley.

Best!
Michael
http://michaelshoup.com

 

[7on]

A nearly flawless solution I've came up with is just do a mail() in php and put your body text in there. I even setup for our company a nice little login page to create their own emails. Granted you can't do bulk emailing unless you've cleared it with your isp but it does the trink to get pure html into Mail.

 

[RedTomato]

I have a similar problem in that we want a nice discreet banner graphic advertising our latest play at the bottom of all our signatures, but mail.app doesn't like this kind of stuff. (never mind that it's dirt easy in Outlook)

Our website company advised us to get an Exchange server and do it through that. Yeah right. Apart from us being all Mac, there's only 4 - 5 seats here in the company and we don't even run a proper server. Some of the worst IT advice I've ever received.

My current thinking, and this may work for the OP too, is to use an i-frame in the signature to pull a small banner image from a page on one of my web-hosting accounts. That way, whenever we move to a new project, only that one image needs to be updated, and everyone's email signatures will update.

Thoughts?

 

[design-is]

iframe isn't a good idea - a lot of email readers and services won't render it.

Found this after a trip to google: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050706181449478

Old, but might work?

Best way put a simple image at the bottom of your email is to host it on your web server and link to it with some html <img src="... etc. No iframe needed. Then if you want to update it, you just switch it out on the server. And it will avoid every email having the image as an attachment.

 

[RedTomato]

iframe isn't a good idea - a lot of email readers and services won't render it.

Thanks for the tip. Won't use an iframe then. I was quite dubious about the idea as it seemed a prime route for dodgy things - 'hey let's call up and run some outside code that hasn't been through any AV checks'.

Found this after a trip to google: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050706181449478

Old, but might work?

That's what we've been doing for the last few months, but it is extremely cumbersome to do for 4 non-technical staff. I will stop working there soon, and I want something simple that carries them forwards.

Best way put a simple image at the bottom of your email is to host it on your web server and link to it with some html <img src="... etc. No iframe needed. Then if you want to update it, you just switch it out on the server. And it will avoid every email having the image as an attachment.

Yup, sometimes simple ideas are the best. Think will go that route. Many thanks.

BTW our website designers / hosts run our website via a custom CMS, and none of the standard image sizes on that CMS are suitable for banner signatures. I've asked for a spare blank page to host our image on, but the CMS assigns each uploaded image a new name or something, breaking the signature code, and the hosts' suggestion was to buy an Exchange server ... grrr

So I'll have to host the company's signature images on one of my spare hosting accounts and charge them £20/year for the privilege, even though I will stop working there soon.

 

[bugsy41]

easy way for animated gifs in emails

The only way I use to send an animated .gif with a Mac, so it displays as animated when the recipient opens it, is :

Use Microsoft Word
Open a new document
Paste the text and .gif into it just like you would any document.
Don't worry about page length but do format the text the way you want it with the .gif file where you want it.

Then go to File and pull down to "Share" if you have Office 2011 and send as E-Mail (HTML)
Or
Go to File, "Send To" in with Word 2008 and choose Mail Recipient (as HTML).

If you have your email program set up correctly in Word, it will open your email program and insert it.
Just add the Subject and the email addresses like any email.

When they open it, it should be running because your whole email is formatted in HTML and that is what is necessary to make the animation run.

It's easy when you get the hang of it. Try emailing it to yourself once to see if you did it right.

I've never tried it with other word processors so I don't know if they can create an email in HTML formatting.

 

[MisterMe]

After a month of waiting for an answer, now everyone can go home and rest easy. bugsy41 had the courage to revive a dead thread to answer the question.

 

[surreal1221]

Okay, sorry to revive this thread...

But...I have Office 2011 for Mac, and of course I do not have a Share > E-mail (as HTML) option.

I have Outlook setup with one account and Apple Mail set up with another...

Any help is much appreciated...all I need to do is have the ability to send a composed .doc from Word directly as an HTML in an e-mail...no copy and paste, no using additional programs. This process works just fine on a windows machine, and while I can accomplish the task as necessary on a windows machine, I would much rather handle this remotely as necessary from my mac.

Thanks

 

[gromath]

How to make a newsletter based on split images with links Outlook 2011 mac

How to make a newsletter based on split images with links Outlook 2011 mac:

sorry I type this quickly, I'm still overdue delivering this job but I wanted to post a solution to my problem so maybe someone else's' neck is saved

After long searching I couldn't find a solution to my problem. I'm a graphic designer but mostly for video which means HTML is not on my qualification. But I was asked to make a newsletter to be delivered to other employees of our company…of course everyone uses Outlook. Now, I work with mac and I have Outlook 2011. After googling how to solve my problem I fond no one had a definite answer since outlook lets you edit html on some version and in some others -such as 2011- it doesn't. However, something I found in some forums was a trick…if you copy your HTML and paste it in to your email it will translate and thus you will have your newsletter.

I tried doing this on dreamweaver but, alas, as I copy pasted the split images (previously sliced in photoshop)
I noticed the split images moved around as I resized the browser window and had ugly spaces between the images. This also happened in the Outlook WEb app so…NOT good. Finally something told me maybe trying fireworks cs6. I've never used FW before but, boy, it is really intuitive. So that said all I did was import my image (as a whole, not split in any way) and then using the slicing too. With the slicing tool Y make all the squares and rectangles for the sections and then on the bottom, on the property editor I noticed there was a "link" prompter. Here I wrote where my link should go when clicking the slice. Last. I selected file, export and I exported as an HTML. I opened the HTML file double clicking it on my finder and it opened on firefox or chrome.. anyway I tried the copy-paste trick and Voila! no more weird moving or spaces between images, and the links worked perfectly.

So there you have it. hope this works