I want to send out an ad via e-mail. How can I make it so the ad shows up in the body of the e-mail?

Question

What I am trying to say is I want to compose a new e-mail with an ad (i.e. flyer) in the body of the e-mail. How can I do that so the person on the other end sees the ad in the body of the e-mail? I don't want them to have to right-click or anything to make the ad appear. I just want the ad to be visible once they open the e-mail.

Answer 1

To achieve desired effect, you have to send e-mail in HTML format with a picture "embedded" into it (rather than attached as a separate file).



The exact way of doing this depends on your e-mail client program (like Outlook Express) and e-mail service provider. Most major free web-based e-mails (Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail, AOL) do not support this if you compose message via web interface. However you can do it with GMail or Yahoo Mail Plus over SMTP.



In Outlook Express, just use 'Insert Picture' button when composing a message and paste your picture into the message body. Make sure you have selected 'Rich Text (HTML)' format as message format.



In other e-mail programs it should be very similar - the idea is to use HTML/Rich Text format and paste the picture into its body.



Use picture only in JPEG or PNG format and make sure it's scaled down to reasonable size (1024x768 or so) that will fit on most people's monitors.



It's a good idea to include some text at the end to indicate what is this about, as many e-mail providers will initially block any images included in the e-mail.



If you have technical ability to do that, it's also a good to include a link to the web page with the same content so that people who can't read "rich" e-mails will have alternative way of looking at your message.



There's nothing inherently bad in embedding a picture into e-mail and there are many legitimate reasons for doing so.

True - many spammers employ similar technique, and some corporate firewalls may block such e-mails as spam, but that would not necessarily prevent your e-mail from reaching most of intended recipients.

Answer 2

Spammers are more "untouchable" than you think. Did you know that more than 92% of all emails sent on this planet everyday are actually spam mails??? And that all that spam is coming from who authorities believe are only 12 people worldwide. Yet they still cannot catch them. Apparently it is a very difficult task to track down the source. Although you say the sender is operating from a Yahoo account, it is highly unlikely. Spammers are programmers, and can make anything look like anything else. When it comes to spam, nothing is as it appears. The lesson here is to be smart about handling mails that come from people we don't know and trust. The first rule is to NEVER open spam mail. NEVER!!

Answer 3

A word of warning, this insertion of an image into the page is a common method used by scam sales spammers to hide their text. All my clients, and from other IT managers I believe many others, now set their spam filters to delete emails which are basically image based.