Banner Ad for Email

I've created various banners that need to be emailed out. They're going to be a clickable link to our website. I found that directly pasting the coding into an email doesn't work. So I saved it to a plain text file called banner.html

The problem I'm running into is that in Apple Mail and Outlook instead of the banner showing up, it just shows me the banner.html file that I had attached. Can anyone offer some insight as to why that might be?

I've confirmed that it works in my web based MSN mail, and in Thunderbird. Is there additional coding that needs to be added? I definitely have html enabled in Outlook and Apple Mail.

This is what's contained in my banner.html file.

<a href="https://ourwebsite"><img src="http://ourbanner8.jpg"></a>

This is what it looks like in Outlook and Apple Mail.

Well, sorry if this is disappointing, but what you send as attachment is not displayed in mail as it is, but only as attachment.

Can I ask what is the purpose of having banner in mail?

OK, so the attachment method is not the way then. It was just one of many things I tried. Pasting the HTML coding right into an email didn't work at all, whereas the attachment method worked in MSN and Thunderbird.

This is for a finance company. We need to send a direct link to an online app that's only offered to select customers, so rather than just sending out a plain text link, we want it to be a clickable banner.

direct link to an online app that's only offered to select customers, so rather than just sending out a plain text link,

Great. I have two questions. What are you going to do for those customers whose email providers only allow text emails? Sometimes it has nothing to do with what app the user is using to check their email. Or what about those clients that have purposely configured their email apps to allow only text emails?

It is possible to embed html directly into an email. A couple of problems with it though. Use of images also allows for people to track whether or not an email was opened, which can be a privacy issue. Also, it is popular for phishing emails to contain large amounts of HTML. What that means is that filtering software often pays more attention to HTML emails, and is more likely to flag them as spam. If your client uses Hotmail or .... can't remember the other one right off the top of my head, anyway, if the HTML does not comply to W3C standards, they will reject it.

Just a few things that you should consider. Otherwise, there are tons of tutorials that show how it is done. However, if any of the conditions I listed above exist, then your email won't make it anyway, or will be unreadable.

Thanks for the advice. I've also considered that, but they want me to go ahead with doing this. It will only be sent to people that we have ongoing business with, so it getting flagged as spam shouldn't be as much of a problem as whether or not they have HTML enabled. It's going to be a single jpeg, and nothing more. I've done tons of searching, and I just don't know what I have to do to make this work. In the past I've done an email newsletter as well, that I had to pass off to IT to distribute for the same issues I'm having now.

I'm at a loss as to how I plug the html into an email. Pasting the coding in doesn't work, and attaching the .html file is hit and miss. What am I missing? The .jpeg is uploaded to our server, and the coding, if I have that part right, is dead simple.

You can't paste it in. You have to use the insert capabilities of your email client. Outlook 2010 has the option of creating an HTML type email. In Thunderbird you just need to make sure that the 'Compose messages in HTML format' option is selected.

so it getting flagged as spam shouldn't be as much of a problem as whether or not they have HTML enabled.

Are you going on the idea that they will set up their email filters to allow the email in the first place? Again, what happens to those users who do not have HTML email enabled or blocked by their provider? Regardless of what 'they' want, 'they' should be aware of the possible ramifications. If I were their client, I wouldn't even get the email, and thus wouldn't even know about it.

Oh, thank you! I had a feeling I was missing something simple, and because I use Apple Mail I never thought to try sending from a different email app. I don't like Apple Mail but it plays so nicely with all my other apps on the Mac.

I agree with you on the whole what happens if they don't have HTML enabled. The IT guys said the exact same thing, but the people in charge want what they want, so what can we do. Their argument is that these links are going to be sent to people who we(or the people in sales, really) have an ongoing relationship with. They will most likely be in each others address books already, and will be expecting the email with the application link. We finance cosmetic surgery primarily, so most of these people are very eager to get their new boobies or whatever, and the doctors will be just as eager to get them financed.

I appreciate the help. I'm the graphic designer, so doing anything like this is hard for me since that I'm pretty much just winging it with Dreamweaver. Now I have to go build a webpage that sends these things out, or figure out an idiot-proof way for people to send them.

Safari should have the same capabilities.

Now I have to go build a webpage that sends these things out, or figure out an idiot-proof way for people to send them.

Web pages can't send emails. Has to be PHP, Perl, or something else. HTML just displays content; no programming capabilities whatsoever. And if it is getting mailed out from the company's servers, then you are going to want to talk to IT.

Well, in that case there's probably no way I'll be able to do this. My first thought was to try making a pdf form that you could plug an email address into, that would then send the banner off. But, that's probably not possible either. I've done buttons on pdf's for printing and emailing forms using java, but this is way more complex.