Recently one of our customers encountered an issue with rendering when sending to the “full version” of Microsoft Live Mail. A few of the fields in their email showed up as blank white space! Our testing of similar emails via Pivotal Veracity’s eDesign Optimizer showed perfect rendering in all other top ISP email clients, even Hotmail and Microsoft Live Mail “Classic.” The Live Mail “full version” is one that appears to have this unique issue.

What’s the issue? In the initial code from our client’s newsletter (recently redesigned), the designers did not specify a font color within the text boxes that showed as blank white boxes. Live Mail defaulted the text to white (all other email clients played nice and used the standard HTML default of black text).

In Live Mail full-version, the text is there, you just couldn’t see it unless you highlighted it (because of the white background). Here’s the added bonus: We tested other emails using undefined font colors, and it did not show the same issue. Live Mail did what we’d expect and displayed black text.

What drove the issue for the client at hand seemed to be a “perfect storm” of sorts. The template uses an outside table and inner tables. The outer table defines a font color of white over a green background. So, it appears the interaction of the outer table having font color defined as white and the inner table with no font specified led Live Mail to display the text as white. I’m not positive what the W3C‘s say about this, but other email clients (even Hotmail) dealt with it differently than Live Mail. This, by the way, isn’t the first display issue found in Live Mail (read this post from Campaign Monitor).

At the end of the day, this is a fairly complex issue and one other email marketers should be aware of. The “full version” of Live Mail acts differently in the treatment of text than other email clients in the marketplace. Pre-testing content with a rendering tool like eDesign Optimizer is even more critical these days as the major players are rolling out regular changes to their email software.

—Chip House

the voice of email

Welcome to the Email Experience Council's blog, a forum for the email marketing industry's leading voices. On these pages, you'll find the opinions and thought-leadership that's driving the next evolution of email.

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the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Elie Ashery is the president and CEO of Gold Lasso, and is responsible for the company’s vision and strategy execution. Before joining Gold Lasso, he co-founded Newsletters.com in 1997, selling it to The Tribune Cos. in 2000. He then worked for IncenSoft, focusing on email marketing while there. Read more.

Amy Bills is the senior manager of field marketing at lead optimization company Bulldog Solutions. She is responsible for lead generation and the go-to-market execution of Bulldog's new products and initiatives. Amy was previously the editorial team leader of Freescale Semiconductor’s internal creative agency and a senior editor at Hoover’s Online. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Spencer Kollas is the director of delivery services at StrongMail, helping maximize customers’ email deliverability rates. He was previously director of deliverability services for Premiere Global Services. Spencer is an active member in the Email Sender & Provider Coalition, Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group, the Anti-Phishing Work Group and, of course, the eec. Read more.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Erick Mott is the director of marketing and corporate communications for Habeas, the leader in email reputation management services. He has a rich background in marketing and communications strategy and execution for such companies as Nokia, MarkMonitor, GlobalFluency, Cisco Systems, Creator Connection, Sun Microsystems, Philips NV, Elm Products and CBS Television. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the Email Experiene Council's founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

Jeremy Swift is director of client relations for email service provider BlueHornet. He helped form BlueHornet’s founding team in 2000 and has been responsible for client services and marketing strategy since the company’s inception. Jeremy is known for his ability to articulate technical information in ways that clearly resonate with today’s online marketer.

DJ Waldow is an account manager at Bronto Software. He works with Bronto’s largest clients to help them achieve and surpass their marketing goals. An active member of the email marketing community, DJ posts regularly on the Email Marketer’s Club, publishes a bi-weekly email marketing best practices newsletter, and films BrontoFire.

Chad White is the Email Experience Council’s director of retail insights and editor-at-large. He founded and is the author of the Retail Email Blog, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.