Re-Designing the classic email client

Re:Re-Designing the classic email client by gcr on Tuesday July 10, 2012 @11:10PM (#4227544)

Let's pretend you're sending messages to your new users who have just clicked the "Sign Up" button on your fancy landing page.

The problem? They, along with a significant percentage of your other users, use text-based email clients.

This is the wrong way of sending text-only email:

    <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Thanks for signing up!</title> </head> <body><h1>Thanks for signing up!</h1>Click <a href="http://new-registrants.sneakystartup.net/>here</a> to finish your registration. </body> </html>

Stripping HTML tags is also wrong:

    Thanks for signing up!
    Click here to finish your registration.

This is the correct way of sending text-only email:

    Thanks for signing up!
    ======================
    Click here[1] to finish your registration.
    
    1: http://new-registrants.sneakystartup.net

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Re:Re-Designing the classic email client by saurik on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @01:24AM (#4227856)

(FWIW, I took the emphasis and subsequent wonkier smily to mean he was joking, and in fact have accidentally sent such emails in the past from his own website.)

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Re:Re-Designing the classic email client by dredmorbius on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @02:05AM (#4227987)

Indeed I was.

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Re:Re-Designing the classic email client by mnutt on Wednesday July 11, 2012 @12:17AM (#4227703)

And most likely you only have a handful of these templates, so if you're nice you'll actually just put some effort into each one:

    Thanks for signing up!
    ======================
    Click here to finish your registration:

    http://new-registrants.sneakystartup.net

(it's much less egregious here than it is in some emails that have 7-8 footnotes)

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