Mailgen – Generates clean, responsive HTML for transactional email
npmjs.com
npmjs.com
This project seems to be more specific, targeting Node users.
Any plans to extend this to use GMail's enhancements allowing a confirmation button in the subject line, thus letting the user perform a simple action without opening the actual email?
I see more and more confirmation emails now with the confirm button in the subject line - I believe it requires a few more header specific to GMail to allow this.
Have to revisit this now to see if they have relaxed the requirements a little. It will be good if these became a normal extension to all emails and other clients such as Outlook, Yahoo Mail etc. all pick it up as a standard.
I understand the frustration to some extent – many organisations could get by with using plain text emails rather than HTML ones. But AFAIK HTML emails mean better customer engagement, and can offer useful features to users. A stick-in-the-mud "that isn't real email" attitude unfortunately doesn't get us that far.
Or the illusion thereof.
HTML mail is more likely to go into the Junk mailbox. Guess the most usefull thing with HTML email is the "pixel gif" that you use to track it, and it's useful only to the sender, not the receiver.
On the other hand, IDK what "useful features" of HTML you talk about, other than being (relatively, possibly, and never certainly) pretty.
I'm not sure about that. I'm afraid I don't have access to the numbers any more, but I've seen firsthand how HTML emails can result in more engagement with customers – more likely to follow links, in particular.
HTML mail is more likely to go into the Junk mailbox.
Is that really true? If anything, I've seen that regular customers—assuming you are not a tech-focused business—are less likely to read emails in plain-text formats!
On the other hand, IDK what "useful features" of HTML you talk about, other than being (relatively, possibly, and never certainly) pretty.
I don't think that 'pretty' is really fair – more like 'can have visual design'. If it were the case, surely magazines and newspapers would be nothing but plain text too, as would all mail we receive. In contrast, I would be a bit freaked out to receive something like a utility bill in the mail that was in plain text, without a company logo, or formatting, or other elements that make it more usable and identifiable.
I do completely understand that you prefer plain-text email, and so do I. But I'm pretty sure we are in the minority there, and that most people treat email in the same way as they'd treat physical mail – and that probably means that the relatively invisible downsides (tracking, size, poor formatting etc.) are outweighed by being formatted more effectively.