I only use plain text emails. I don't even use email tracking so that hidden pixel doesn't trigger any annoying warning on the email client that ruins the experience.
Sending unsolicited email to consumers is, indeed, spam. B2B is different.
EDIT: CANSPAM (US) is a bit ambiguous on this point. (Helpful blog post: http://customer.io/blog/Send-email-without-unsubscribe-link-...) CASL, its Canadian equivalent (I'm Canadian) is very clear on this point, though--unsolicited B2B to a publicly posted email address is a-ok, as long as it's not automated.
"Just to be clear, you’re not allowed to use Customer.io to send cold emails.."
Guess why :)
Edit: They are a business and have a "contact us" email on their website. Should I really not email them just because im not a customer, but a possible partner?
Another way of phrasing your mother's advice: "What if everybody did X?"
On the other hand, spamming or otherwise misusing email to deliver your unsolicited "message" at everyone else's expense is a classic instance of the Tragedy of the Commons. There is no incentive for any individual actor to do the right thing. Kant's categorical imperative is one of several reasonable ways to think about it.
I think the same for the email. If,everybody who can make a legitimate business proposal email them, no problem. And I apply the same ethics when I had my own company with a public email on my website (now im an employee and emails dont get to me)
Only if it is sent in bulk.
Unsolicited commercial email is spam, regardless of whether it is B2B, and regardless of whether it is sent to "public addresses".
Depends in which country you are in but in most EU countries, that is still spam and hence subject to legal action.
Edit: why the downvote? Care to explain your point?
When I say plain text, I mean plain-text. I mean not even markdown. Just plain text. The client can choose to make links clickable if they like.
Any formatted document should come as an attachment (I'd prefer PDF). I guess it should be an attachment I expect or I probably wouldn't open it. In any case, I don't like emails with tracking. It feels forced. If you really care, send delivery and read receipt requests but I doubt we do.
Markdown should stay where it belongs. It should convert into HTML in the server, not on my client.
They took that option away from me in 2011. No, I don't care about a picture. All I wanted was fixed width font, and plain text. Yes, I could apply style sheets to read plain text, and they would eventually break them for me. I'm not bothering with an uphill battle to get it back. I'm just moving on.
Oh, and about rich text? If I happen to be cutting and pasting something that was bold over here, I usually don't want it bold in my email! In fact I've wanted that approximately 0 times in my life. And it is a very good approximation.
If I happen to be cutting and pasting something that was
bold over here, I usually don't want it bold in my email!
Plain text cuts all the cruft and I can reasonably expect emails I receive to largely look similar so I get good at extracting relevant information.
Every client I have, desktop and mobile, displays and sends in plain text only and I'm pleasantly surprised how infrequently this breaks anything completely and how often it exposes tracking links etc.
If we must track users, perhaps we can just give them a link they can visit?
What do you think about using attachments for documents where formatting is essential?
Something I found interesting in the Wikipedia MIME article is:
> Text in character sets other than ASCII
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME
If I so much as write க in Tamil, I rely on MIME. (Sorry if this is obvious to readers. I am not an email expert.) For others like me, the Wikipedia article on email spells it out:
> Originally an ASCII text-only communications medium, Internet email was extended by Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) to carry text in other character sets and multi-media content attachments. International email, with internationalized email addresses using UTF-8, has been standardized, but not yet widely adopted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email
Sorry for going off on a tangent. I appreciate your reply as I learned something new today. (:
If plain text email was the end-all, then instant messenger and SMS would have killed email a long time ago.
+----------------------------------+---------+------------------------+
| Col1 | Col2 | Col3 |
+----------------------------------+---------+------------------------+
| Value 1 | Value 2 | 123 |
| Separate | cols | with a tab or 4 spaces |
| This is a row with only one cell | | |
+----------------------------------+---------+------------------------+It also doesn't necessarily work well for non-European languages.
It also looks ugly.
However, as I put on my True Scotsman hat and kilt, any true email client will present monospaced fonts, therefor those which fail to do so aren't real email tools.
Actually not that often. If the formatting is critical to the email, don't write it in an email. Send me a PDF.
https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/msg/gm...