How can I embed images directly in an HTML email blast?

February 20, 2009 5:56 PM

I need to send an email blast for work through a list vendor and need help converting my original HTML email blast into an embedded HTML file.

I normally use ConstantContact for my email blasts and have successfully coded many HTML emails using it.

I now have the opportunity to send my email blast to a rented email list and they do not offer image hosting and instead asked for just an HTML file.

I don't want to host the images, and I've read that there are benefits to directly embedding the images versus linking to hosted images, namely that having images disabled does not affect those that are directly embedded.

I know in Outlook when I create an email and embed an image and save that email as an HTML file, it embeds the image into it and it works great for this purpose. Unfortunately, Outlook has some of the crappiest HTML capabilities ever (whoever at MS thought it would be smart to use Word's rendering engine should be shot) which makes it incredibly difficult to get the email looking the way I want it to.

How can I go about directly embedding the images within the HTML itself in a manner similar to how Outlook does it so that I can just provide the list vendor with a single HTML file that does not need to link to external images?

posted by Elminster24 to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: There is no such thing as embedded images in HTML. Impossible, I say! Outlook uses a microsoft-specific format in order to achieve what you see. Basically it hides the fact that it's attaching the pictures and showing them inline without the need for attaching them explicitly. Since it's not an open standard, it's very hit or miss whether non-Outlook email clients (like webmail, Thunderbird, Lotus Notes, etc.) will see the images and layout you've intended. If by chance it does, it's because an intermediary server has converted the Outlook-format to HTML format and has hosted the images automatically. It will result in sizable portions of your receivers getting ugly messages.

An outlook message with the embedded images will not be "an HTML file" or anything like it and your list manager will not be able to do anything with it. That's your immediate problem and the easiest way around it is to host the images yourself. Sorry. It's not ideal, since lots of clients won't load images by default anymore (for security reasons), but best practice is to host the images and use ordinary HTML and CSS to layout the message. Apple does this. Fossil does this. Bed, Bath, & Beyond does this. I do this. Everyone does this* so don't worry about the extra click to load images or just don't use images at all. I'd be surprised if there wasn't a way to just send a test of your message through ConstantContact and use the image URLs from that as the source for the images in the HTML file you hand over. Then you wouldn't even need to set up separate hosting (which is easy and cheap anyway, ya bum!).

* Big guys like Apple may actually send different versions of an email to different domains. E.g., one tailored for Gmail, one for Hotmail, one for a domain that uses an Outlook email server, etc. But that sort of nitpicking is way beyond the capabilities of the mass mail vendors I've seen.
posted by cowbellemoo at 7:19 PM on February 20, 2009

I've read that there are benefits to directly embedding the images versus linking to hosted images, namely that having images disabled does not affect those that are directly embedded.


I doubt this very much. Typically the image file will just an a uuencoded text blob that email clients will present as attachments. I think some versions of Outlook and Outlook express might show them inline, but its a crapshoot. Modern email clients are much more security conscious. Pay 10 bucks for the dreamhost account and host them.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:15 PM on February 20, 2009

Like cowbellemoo said, it's impossible to embed an image directly into an HTML document. You need to host the image somewhere, like ImageShack or TinyPic.
posted by ascetic at 3:31 PM on February 21, 2009