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When designing websites, you can use external CSS with semantic markup and update the look of an entire site at once. Unfortunately, email browsers haven’t advanced as much as web browsers. Most email programs require tables and font tags (which haven’t been recommended for web design in years) to make sure your email looks how you want it. Or you could send just a jpg instead of text with supporting images—if you didn’t care that most users would just see a big red x when they opened your email.

Sadly, there are those who send html emails without realizing that most email browsers have images turned off by default. A well-designed email should look good even without images displayed. Especially now that the latest version of Outlook doesn’t support background images—and Microsoft has no plans to fix it.

Email marketing providers make it easier for designers to develop html emails. (And let the marketing people track users’ response to the email.) Some let you upload a style sheet with your html code and the provider inserts inline styles when sending the email. Most providers automatically create an html version and a plain text version of the same email. Now that so many people are checking their email by cell, it’s especially important to send plain text emails. Some cell email browsers treat the entire html as an attachment. How many users would really open an attachment on an otherwise blank email?