Hi, guys. From day to day, we send lots of emails and a huge fraction of those are of marketing nature. We're used to actionable HTML stuff in our inbox, and there are very few clients that don't support HTML email layouts. Still, we usually send two versions. HTML and plain text. Do we really need to send plain versions or it's just a second system syndrome of doing everything "right"?
> Do we really need to send plain versions or it's just a second system syndrome of doing everything "right"?<p>Yes, you do need to send plain versions. I make my e-mail clients to use plain
text version first, and if that's not available, HTML version dumbed down to
plain text. The cases when somebody needs to send formatted e-mail are really,
really rare. Though...<p>> From day to day, we send lots of emails and a huge fraction of those are of marketing nature.<p>...I delete marketing e-mails on the spot.
> Do we really need to send plain versions or it's just a second system syndrome of doing everything "right"?<p>It depends on your costs / target ratio. You will have a percent of users that absolutely need to get text emails. If delivering text e-mails to them gets you more money than you spend sending the two versions, send them. Otherwise, just send the HTML ones.<p>Same for browser support. If, for example, you spend more supporting IE than you gain from only-IE users, just don't support IE.