Xplore Net Solutions are a New Zealand website design and development company and ecommerce provider. We are the developers of the Xsite Content Management System and Xmail Precision Email Marketing software

Outlook 2007 not so good (03/07)

While much of the world gapes in awe at the new Microsoft Vista Operating System, the release of Outlook 2007 has been far more subdued; and for good reason. The latest and greatest Microsoft Office application has immeasurable implications to the future of e-mail marketing and at a high cost for business owners.

Those of you who have already upgraded to Outlook 07 may have noticed that your favourite, polished and appealing e-mail newsletters are now missing images and showcasing gaping great blocks of white space.

Those of you who have already upgraded to Outlook 07 may have noticed that your favourite e-mail newsletters are now unreadable...

Up until the latest release of Outlook 07 Microsoft has used the same rendering engine as Internet Explorer to display e-mail communications; Outlook 07 sports a completely new set of rules on how e-mail templates should be built, using the Microsoft Word’s rendering engine instead. The result is the inevitable disintegration of e-mail templates in this very different environment.

The Microsoft marketing machine defends the change, claiming it gives users better Microsoft Word authoring tools and they believe that pages should be displayed using the same engine that authors them. This is of little consolation to business owners who will need to invest anywhere from $400 to $25,000 to update their e-mail templates (and some software) with the growing number of Outlook 07 users in mind.

In addition to this frustrating new cost for businesses, the final blow seems to be the swathe of HTML and CSS layouts/effects that the new rendering engine does not support. We can all say farewell to e-mail templates featuring background graphics, form fields, background colours, side panels and other complex (but oh, so professional) layouts. The new generation of e-mail templates will indeed be a bleak and unimaginative collection.

While Microsoft offers businesses the timesaving advantages of Outlook 07’s improved calendar and e-mail management systems, they have also thoughtlessly bullied e-mail marketing into a significant step backwards. The impact of this major change will become more apparent over the next 6 months as more home and business users change to Outlook 07 and our e-mail communications are “dumbed down”.

Author: Wendy Schollum

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