[Web4lib] Generating html-only e-mail for e-newsletter purposes ?

[Neil Quinlan]

Dear All,

While I know that many have mixed feelings in principle regarding html e-mail I would be grateful for any advice / recommendations etc. on generating html e-mail newsletters for circulation amongst our staff here. 

Anyone involved in the area will appreciate the challenge in creating attractive, user friendly newsletters for circulation amongst a large staff in diverse locations. 
The 'instant accessibility' of an email newsletter that 'forces' the destination e-mail application to display it in html is something I'd like to at least experiment with as it might be a way of reaching more people.

Note: we currently use Groupwise 7.0 as an institution - while it can generate html mails these will typically revert to text when the users open them, as far as I can see, and are therefore no good for this purpose.
Rather than requiring the user to manually choose view / html to see the html version I'd like to create a mail which defaults to html on opening whatever preferences the user has set locally - as happens with many commercial/NGO e-mail newsletters that I'm receiving lately - some including a 'if this mail doesn't display properly click here' function in the body of the mail.

Thanks in advance for your help, Neil
Neil Quinlan
Waterford Institute of Technology
Ireland