12

It turns out to be quite easy to send emails with .NET that use embedded images. By embedding I mean actually include the image as an MIME attachment.

I'm just trying to figure out whether or not I should embed images as resources for mass mailings (to opt-in / existing customers). Alternatively I would just reference images with a <img src>

Reasons for embedding images

  • Spam filters may be less likely to block emails - because no tracking pixels exist
  • Email clients may be more likely to show the images - because no tracking pixels exist
  • Available for offline viewing
  • We don't need to host the images indefinitely

Reasons for not embedding images (IMG src attribute pointing to an external site)

  • Spam filters may be more likely to block large files if we have lots of images
  • We get to host the images and change them if we made a mistake
  • We can track views of emails in server logs
  • Blasting out a tonne of emails should take a lot less time
  • We take less of a server bandwidth hit for the hosted images555
  • Sending out many emails with embedded images may take a long time becuse we have to send 400kb for each email

I'm sure there are more reasons.

I'm most concerned about spam related issues. Curious for anybody's input

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Simon_Weaver
  • 140,023
  • 84
  • 646
  • 689

2 Answers2

1

You can at least check the spam-score of the email you've created. Checking two versions with and without embedded images. A lot of mailing applications (mass-mailers) offer some sort of spam check functionality. Or you could use a tool like: http://spamcheck.postmarkapp.com/

tvgemert
  • 1,436
  • 3
  • 25
  • 50
0

Try base64 embedding?

http://yellowgreen.de/image-to-base64-string-encoder

Jeremy
  • 3,880
  • 3
  • 35
  • 42