created on Fri, 2006-07-21 10:37 Mark Wyner, Mark Wyner Design, gave a great and thorough talk on all the aspects to consider in building a better HTML email for you and your company.

• Your desktop is not a launch pad.
• Comic Sans is the devil.
• How do you deploy? Use an email-administration application. Create your own or use one of the many on the market. Mark uses Campaign Monitor and MailBuild.
• Techniques and best practices: The web-standards battle - standards-focused web designers use antiquated markup for design integrity
• Some benefits of web standards:
  1. Increased use of handheld/mobile devices, disparate support for presentation layer
  2. Accessibility
  3. Spam filters assess content-to-code ratios
• Embed your style sheets
• An email is a single document
• Account for all scenarios: build for progressive enhancement and create simple experience for lowest common denominator
• Image usage: display contextual images inline (products, people, etc) and display template images as CSS backgrounds
• Email clients offer image blocking
• Preserve format upon forwarding: forwarding-methods vary - as attachment, source code revealed, converted to plain text, converted to proprietary HTML

To Sum Up:

• CAN-SPAM Act compliance
• Comic sans is on the prowl
• Appropriate imagery encourages reading
• Emails benefit from web standards
• Embed style sheets
• Build for progressive enhancement
• Implement a forwarding utility
• Send multipart messages
• Contextual images inline
• Account for CSS on, images off
• Test like maniacs

Some Useful Resources:
CAN-SPAM Act
HTML Emails - Taming the best
CSS Support
Campaign Monitor
MailBuild

You can find these notes in more detail in Mark's Conference Slides here.