You've developed the beginnings of a house e-mail list by now and have committed yourself to publishing a newsletter at least every month (I hope!). The next step is to determine the format your e-zine or promotional message should take.

Here are the choices:

• Plain Text
• HTML
• Multi-Part MIME (a "sandwich" of both text and HTML)

Even better, produce your newsletter in both text and HTML formats and let your subscribers choose which they prefer.

Let's examine the results surveys of 954 e-mail users in early April 2003 to try to understand the factors involved in formatting messages. I administered the same survey of two rather different groups of people, a slightly different survey to a third group.

Recipient Viewing Capability

In a study of 723 respondents, twice as many Bible study participants had a dial-up connection as business participants. But 45% of Bible study participants and 77% of business participants had broadband Internet access. Access speed has some effect on preference for plain text e-mails, especially among more sophisticated business users, as seen in these results:

Predominant E-Mail Client Programs

In the survey I studied e-mail clients of 386 Bible study respondents and 457 business respondents. The full list of e-mail clients mentioned in the survey is available on my website. http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/email_clients_chart.htm Here were the most popular e-mail client programs:

Outlook Express was universally popular with both business and Bible study users. AOL 6.0 to 8.0, Yahoo! Mail, and HotMail, were much more popular among Bible study users than with business users. However, Outlook 2000+ was the clear choice of nearly 48% of business users, with a small minority of Eudora 5.0+ and Outlook Express 6.0 users.

In particular, I'm glad to see that in the small sample I studied (65 respondents), 92% of AOL users had upgraded to e-mail client programs (versions 6.0, 7.0, and 8.0) that can see HTML.

This data is important to understand, since the way you format your e-mail will have a lot to do with how your readers will access it.

HTML Readability Today

Two years ago I published an "HTML E-Mail Client Program Summary" (Web Marketing Today, 3/1/01) in which I determined that about 13% of my readers could not see HTML e-mail. A lot has changed since then.

These days apparently only a tiny fraction of Internet users don't see HTML e-mail. I asked respondents whether their e-mail programs could see HTML, here were their answers:

However, when I checked the capability of the e-mail programs named by the respondents, I determined that nearly all of their e-mail programs were capable of seeing HTML e-mail. Here were some of the comments from this group that claimed they couldn't see HTML e-mail:

• "Because I am in the dark about HTML couldn't answer this survey very intelligently, thanks anyway." (Juno 5.0.33)
• "I have no idea what HTML is or URL for that matter." (AOL 6.0 sub 10577)
• "I really don't know if there is a problem." (MS Outlook Express 6.0)
• "I am very computer illiterate so don't know whether my answers are right or not." (Netscape Communicator 4.5)
• "I am computer illiterate and don't really know what html is." (Netscape Communicator 4.7)

I probably should have identified it as "including color and graphics." 

I estimate that 99% of Internet users can read HTML e-mail. Based on the e-mail programs they were using, less than 1% of my April 2003 survey of a US non-business group could not see HTML e-mail -- only those using AOL 3.0 to 5.0, Eudora 3.0, Pine, and early versions of Lotus Notes and Novel GroupWise.

Recipient Preferences

Just because recipients can see HTML, however, doesn't mean that they prefer to receive HTML e-mails. My survey of 725 respondents showed that about 22% prefer to receive plain text e-mails if they had their choice, and this is a pretty strong preference, especially among business users.

Recently I've received subscriptions to various publications allowing subscribers to select format (text or HTML) with HTML pre-selected. Between 18% and 23% select text as their preference; the rest stay with HTML.

Why did respondents prefer text or HTML? I asked those who indicated a preference (233 business respondents and 286 Bible study respondents). Most previous surveys that have studied e-mail format preference have introduced into the survey reasons why marketers like to send HTML e-mail messages, rather than limiting themselves to reasons why people like to receive one format or another. To correct for this we asked those who preferred HTML e-mails exactly the same questions as those asked of those who preferred text, and plotted their responses.

For all users, consumer or business, text or HTML preference, the top reason for their preference is readability of messages. Of course, text people say text is more readable, while HTML people say HTML is more readable. So there! Several reasons were given in the same frequency by both text and HTML preferers. Business users seemed more discerning about the pros and cons of the formats than casual users -- for example in observing that HTML is more vulnerable than text to security as well as privacy concerns.

Those who stated a preference for HTML e-mail messages gave readability (78%) as their chief reason, followed by attractive display (68%), ease of scanning (64%), and overall design (64%). Surprisingly, those who preferred text e-mail messages also gave readability (73%) as the number one reason for their preference, followed by security from viruses (68%), ease of saving for future use (63%), ease of scanning (61%), and download speed (54%).

The only clear-cut reasons from the data were that 53% of text users thought download speed was important to their choice, compared to only 20% to 30% of HTML users.

On the other hand, overall design was a significant reason for choosing HTML by 60% to 65%, compared to only 46% who gave it as a reason for preferring text.

Summary

• Casual and business owners vary in their typical Internet access speed. In this study, 45% of casual users and 77% of business users had high-speed access.
• Most popular e-mail programs used by casual users were Outlook Express (34%), AOL 6.0 to 8.0 (17%), Yahoo! Mail (13%), Outlook 98/2000/XP (12%), and HotMail (10%).
• Most popular e-mail programs used by business users were Outlook 98/2000/XP (48%), Outlook Express (27%), Eudora (11%).
• 92% of AOL users studied used ver 6.0 and higher and could read HTML e-mail.
• Nearly 99% of respondents could read HTML e-mail, though some didn't know what it was called.
• 18% to 23% of e-mail users preferred to receive text e-mail messages. The rest either didn't care or preferred to receive HTML messages.
• Those who stated a preference for HTML e-mail messages gave readability (78%) as their chief reason, followed by attractive display (68%), ease of scanning (64%), and overall design (64%).
• Those who preferred text e-mail messages also gave readability (73%) as the number one reason for their preference, followed by security from viruses (68%), ease of saving for future use (63%), ease of scanning (61%), and download speed (54%).