Flashing your Email: The Good, Bad and Ugly of using
Flash & Rich Media in your Email!
by Thomas Granger

Lately there has been a great deal of interest in adding
Flash to your everyday run-of-the-mill email so you can
send it to your clients, prospects or newsletter
subscribers. Email marketing has descended from upon high and
declared it, the small business client wants it, or an
executive in management has read about it.

Well, why not?

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The fact of the matter is that email HTML browsers are
just not equal to their web browser equivalents. This
is further made complex by the wide variety of settings,
preferences, security updates, versions, and third-party
applications which make the user experience hard to predict.

This is an interesting problem to contend with when creating,
designing and marketing your HTML email. Most likely you are
about to hate what I am about to say, however, please do not
shoot the messenger.

You should never use Flash or any other Rich Media piece in
your HTML email unless you absolutely know that the email
client your recipient uses can handle Flash content.

Further, you should only send Flash/Rich Media content to
someone who has requested it, or you have an agreed upon
marketing relationship. The first time that I had to wait
almost an hour to download what turned out to be a Flash
Email, I was on a Hotel dialup account. That one Flash
Email cost nearly $15.00 and an hour of my time.

Not exactly the relationship you want to enter into with
your customers or clients. So if you absolutely have to
send Flash content via email, here are a few tips you
should remember.

1) Do not try to control your Flash with active scripting.

Due to the wide variety of email clients, browsers, security
settings, updates, and service packs installed, it is difficult
to predict how a script will execute against any given email
client. JavaScripts can cause browsers & Outlook 2000 to disable
and active scripting contained in an email document (there has
been an increase in email security due to malicious scripts).

2) You're better of attaching or sending a link.

The majority of web-based email clients (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.)
will strip out your Flash content. This is also often done just
so your media doesn't complete with the free web-based email
accounts who use ads as a primary revenue trade-off for using
their service (think: Yahoo).

It is not uncommon to send embedded Flash content only
to have the recipient open it in their web-based client
and see absolutely nothing. Unless the email or content
management tool you are using allows for detection, support
and the delivery of alternate content you should avoid
sending Rich Media unless you know the recipient can receive
such content.

You also cannot rely on a <NOEMBED> to provide an alternate link
for the content. You will need to include a text link before or
after your Flash content for all Web-based recipients and those
whose systems, ISP, network security, or other variables
interfere with their viewing of Flash content.

By sending your Flash content as an attachment or a link, you
can work around some of these limitations imposed by making
the Flash content render in the browser rather in your email.
That way, if your recipient has the plug in, they can view the
Flash file.

3) Make sure your files do not immediately start playing.

Control your content with an onClick, or other event. Just a nice
"Click here for an important message." is all you need. Allow
the viewer to start the presentation when they are ready.

Example: A Flash or Shockwave piece, which begins streaming
if viewed in an Outlook preview window, will start a second
time when the email is opened. This will usually cause quite
a mess with the recipient's sound system, not to mention distort
your intended message.

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Nothing will get your Flash email deleted quicker than if it
causes unexpected sounds to suddenly come pouring loudly from
the recipient's computer during the workday.

These are just a few things you should watch out for if you plan
to design, send and expect responses to your Flash emails.

Flash & other Rich Media may all be year 2001 - "bleeding edge"
for the world of web browsers. Unfortunately your average
HTML Email browser seems stuck at about early 1998.

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