In the early days of the auto industry, Henry Ford is remembered as saying, “We’ll sell you any color automobile you want as long as it’s black”.

With that statement and the standardization of many other parts of the early auto, an industry, unrivaled in the Twentieth Century was born. People loved the auto and the wonderfully colored (black) Model T’s of Ford Motor Company.

Email marketing is going through growing pains today. Much like the early auto, the smart players have kept the variety of email types to a minimum. (My own organization does offer the varieties). Many of the most Branded Email databases on the market today offer only text-based emails. You can not send HTML or XML or Streaming anything through those organizations. What you do get is an effective, correctly sent message that looks exactly as you envisioned it.

That may not be what many creative types want to visualize, but there is more creative in copy when it comes to email than in any graphic content. And at least what you want the recipient to see is actually what they see.

Some readers may be wondering, why I’m saying this while my company and many others possess the technology to deliver all sorts of beautifully designed emails.

The answer is simple.

Many recipients can not see HTML messaging yet. Furthermore, many of the recipients prefer text-based email. Finally, text-based emails may actually be more effective.

These may come as troubling statements to many marketers, VC’s, graphic artists and of course many firms hawking new technology.

Here are some facts that have surprised me and caused me to reflect on how we can use the new technologies as marketers.          

Response rates have been dropping on emails; especially those sent out as HTML emails.

Only 40% of consumer recipients and a smaller group of business recipients are capable of receiving HTML based email as the composer anticipated them seeing it.

A large segment of recipients are on AOL, which requires a different methodology than HTML to see a graphically enhanced message. (Though not difficult to do) The graphic AOL message would be to me similar to an HTML message.

Many consumer and still many businesspersons are on dial up slow speed hook ups to the Internet. The download time and effort of HTML messaging continues to frustrate even ‘browser-based’ recipients.

Finally, HTML emails may actually be a signal to a recipient that they are about to receive a commercial message. That in itself may decrease response rates.

Many “email” gurus will tell you of sniffers that can tell if a person is on a ‘browser based’ email system, which should mean that they can see HTML messages.

Not true, in many offices the HTML capability of say Microsoft Outlook is turned Off (for reasons not related to this article). Therefore, even though the sniffer would recognize that office as an HTML enabled site, it would not be. The message, therefore, would be sent out unintelligible.

I think we are meshing two direct response mediums into one “envelope”. One is the graphically appealing and extraordinary medium of the Web, which calls on a vast array of visual technologies. The second is the quieter medium of email marketing.Cousins in technology to be sure, but not twins.

Think about how we use email to communicate. One to One communication between two individuals is a text based medium. You may send an attachment, but you are not building an HTML message. HTML is the true flag of a commercial message; the FTC need not look any further for a warning.

This first became apparent to me when I noticed that many MIS/IT recipients of email were responding to text-based email above the more sophisticated HTML/exotic emails used in test cells. This was a surprise since one would expect early adapters, in the technology field, to be the first to respond to HTML. The email medium is similar to a written letter, which is designed to foster a feeling of one to one (although the goal should be one to many).

Eventually, this may change. The email of tomorrow will be the product of several generations raised on the Internet and all of its parts. For now, as with the early autos, that meant faster transportation and not variety, email may mean speedier communication and not “cool stuff”.