While using background images on divs, tables and the body can make a web site really pop, stay clear of using them within emails.
As you may already be aware of, individual email clients render html differently. Some like Entourage for Mac will allow the use of background images, while Microsoft Outlook will block them. Most browser based email clients like GMail, Yahoo, and AOL will allow nearly anything you can embed in a web page to be rendered in their web mail clients.
BUT for the sake of ALL your subscribers, you should take care of your design to accommodate rendering in as many clients as possible, and that means if you do use a background image, also define a solid color for the background as well, that way if the image is stripped, there is a fall back color ready to go in it's place.
You: "Uh oh. I worry that my design team has been sending out bad email creative."
Me: "Relax."
There is a great tool within the ExactTarget Email Application called Inbox Preview that will ease your fear of unrenderablilty (I might have just invented that word). Inbox Preview, powered by Pivotal Veracity will pre-render your emails within ExactTarget and show you what they look like in every major email client.
Every ExactTarget account comes with a few free Inbox Preview reports. To learn more visit the Pivotal Veracity listing on The Extensions Network.
As you may already be aware of, individual email clients render html differently. Some like Entourage for Mac will allow the use of background images, while Microsoft Outlook will block them. Most browser based email clients like GMail, Yahoo, and AOL will allow nearly anything you can embed in a web page to be rendered in their web mail clients.
BUT for the sake of ALL your subscribers, you should take care of your design to accommodate rendering in as many clients as possible, and that means if you do use a background image, also define a solid color for the background as well, that way if the image is stripped, there is a fall back color ready to go in it's place.
You: "Uh oh. I worry that my design team has been sending out bad email creative."
Me: "Relax."
There is a great tool within the ExactTarget Email Application called Inbox Preview that will ease your fear of unrenderablilty (I might have just invented that word). Inbox Preview, powered by Pivotal Veracity will pre-render your emails within ExactTarget and show you what they look like in every major email client.
Every ExactTarget account comes with a few free Inbox Preview reports. To learn more visit the Pivotal Veracity listing on The Extensions Network.
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Comments for Solutions Tip: Background images bad, Inbox Preview good