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No mass e-mail may be sent as HTML-only. Mass e-mail must be sent as multipart HTML and text (i.e., both an HTML version and a text version of the communication are included in the same e-mail message) or as text only. Multipart HTML and text is preferred.
The University's mass e-mail system is recommended for multpart e-mail. Find out why in Differences in Mass E-mail: Mass Mailers vs. Desktop Clients.
Use tables. When preparing a multipart message, the layout of the HTML part must be established using tables; CSS should not be used for layout of an HTML e-mail message. CSS positioning is not well supported by e-mail clients at this time, and messages that use CSS positioning for layout will render very differently in different e-mail clients. A simple table layout, such as the one used in the e-mail templates, works well for most communications.
Use inline styles for elements within your table layout. The use of CSS for the styling of elements, but not layout, is acceptable. Most e-mail clients and webmail clients provide acceptable CSS support, and the use of inheritance in CSS makes it much easier to style a message instead of using repeated font declarations or other means of styling text.
Many e-mail clients (especially webmail clients) will ignore external style sheets and styles defined in the head section of an HTML message. CSS styles in mass e-mail must be used inline (e.g., <p style="font-size: 12px;">).
The only exception to the inline styles rule is for link pseudo classes—the CSS declarations that define the styling of a link in its various states, such as active or visited. These styles should be placed in the head section of the HTML message, but be aware that they may be ignored by a recipient's e-mail client. Webmail clients are more likely to recognize styles in the head section than from a referenced stylesheet.
Since different styles will require additional testing, use inheritance of styles whenever possible and keep the number of inline styles to a minimum.
No mass e-mail may include an attached file of any size. Any such files must be made available via a Web site. Mass e-mail may contain a link directly to the file if the file type and size are clearly noted adjacent to the link to the file, e.g.,
Read the report (PDF, 1.2MB)
Alternatively, a link may be provided to a Web page that contains additional information and a link to the final file.
The document type declaration may generally be omitted from mass e-mail. Webmail clients typically declare a DOCTYPE for their content, and this DOCTYPE will override any document type declared in mass e-mail. The document types currently used in webmail vary: HTML 4.01 transitional, XHTML 1.0 transitional, and XHTML 1.0 strict. As a general rule, code your HTML e-mail for HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 transitional compliance, and stick to the UTF-8 character set.
For the most part, the <head> section of a message is not used, or is underused, by e-mail clients. The title is typically not shown to users, nor is any included metadata. The head section of a mass e-mail may remain mostly empty, if present at all. With the exception of CSS pseudo classes (for link styling), no CSS should exist in the head section.
Many people will not see the graphics in your HTML e-mail. This may be for a number of reasons—they may be using an e-mail client that doesn't support HTML, or they may be using a webmail client that requires them to click a link in order to see images, or they may have set their preferences to not see graphics in e-mail.
Whatever the reason, you must always send a text-only version of your e-mail in conjunction with your HTML e-mail to be sure your message can be read.