Outlook 2007: Not All Bleak
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 4:47 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine
With Microsoft’s change in Outlook 2007’s rendering engine from IE to Word, the appearance of email’s in the Inbox will change.
No more CSS or animated GIFs or Flash. No more background images and colors. But the outlook, so to speak, may not be that bad.
Despite Microsoft’s indifference to the complaints of an important body of its users — i.e. email marketers – the change is now set in stone. But email will still be an important venue for delivering messages.
Already, email marketers have had to contend with the possibility that images wouldn’t make it through. Smart ones adopt a practice of including a good text caption, so that even if the image doesn’t appear, the message is still intact. That isn’t great, but it isn’t so bad, either.
After all Google AdWords ads still do pretty well without images. For a comparison, see the difference between this and the snazzier version. While most would agree that the latter is nicer, the former still delivers the message clearly.
And, though it isn’t the type of change anyone wants to deal with, there’s still plenty of time to adapt. Outlook 2007 may see good corporate adoption in the next year or two, but the average target for affiliate marketers is individuals. A lot of those Inboxes we’re aiming for belong to those who read their email at home.
Many of them are still on Outlook 2000 (if they use Outlook at all; I don’t and haven’t for over two years). Many that are using Outlook 2003, even in the workplace, won’t switch over to Outlook 2007 soon. The rate of implmentation of new versions of Microsoft products has been declining for years.
Even with deep discounts, companies are looking ever harder at whether the new features are worth the cost. As a security feature, most will be indifferent. Such things are always more or less forced on them from the IT department convincing a senior manager of the need.
Change in computer technology is inevitable, and not all of it good. But one of the typical affiliate marketer’s most outstanding characteristics is adaptability. That’s part of what keeps him or her in business year after year.
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Good points in your article, but I think you are missing a great feature that works great. That is having your RSS feeds go directly your outlook. (Can’t believe you missed this feature considering this was posted on a blog with rss feeds). I have outlook open all day long for my day to day business use, and its nice to have the feeds come into outlook instead of using another program for that function.
— Have a great day.