Adam Covati over on MarketingProfs posts a very good article about the Email Standards Project .

Email marketers are stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place. On the one hand, a marketer wants the message to be attractive, snazzy, brand-appropriate and all that good stuff. On the other hand, the html message has to render properly whether it’s being displayed in AOL, Outlook, Gmail or what have you.

In attempting to strike a balance between the two, the result often tends to be messages that look like Web pages circa 1999 (minus the spinning .gifs, thank goodness!) and marketers who feel they’ve had to compromise on their brand look and feel.

So establishing a set of html email standards across all clients makes great sense. As the home page of the Project states: "Our goal is to help designers understand why web standards are so important for email, while working with email client developers to ensure that emails render consistently. This is a community effort to improve the email experience for both designers and readers alike."

Of course, performance and aesthetic excellence are not always directly proportional. It’s not unusual for ugly html or wretched-looking landing pages to deliver the best performance. Still, if the email breaks, the message — ugly or otherwise — isn’t even getting out there in the first place. I wish the Standards Project every bit of expedient success possible.

Takeaway for marketers: Looking good is good. Performing well is better. Test. Measure. Rinse and repeat.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2008 at 7:09 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff.