The Email Wars

I had the pleasure today to get a chart from Michelle Eichner at PivotalVeracity showing some testing of forms in email clients. I wanted to share this as we get questions all the time from clients if they can use a form in an email. Will it work? Will it work “right” is more of the question they should ask.

Forms will display most of the time in email. But will the submit button work properly is another answer. Sometimes and it depends on what email client. I typically steer clients away from forms if they cannot segment out email addresses by known email clients. Now who really knows 100% of where someone reads the email? I would wager no one.

From Michelle: “We conduct a research study yearly to understand which Email clients support Forms. There are two parts to the test, A) Do they render B) Are the operable. Below is a chart showing the results of the major email clients. * These clients allow you to access/send information via a form in the email but warn the user when the submit button is clicked.”

View image

So what do you do? You drive them to a landing page to complete the form and enter the data where you have some control on how it works. Getting it out of the email client is a much safer route.

As GI Joe always says, “Knowing is half the battle”, so good luck in your own personal email wars.