There are many of us in the Email Marketing World who have been hoping that Microsoft had realized that using MS Word as the HTML renderer in Outlook 2007 was a mistake. After all, it completely ignores all HTML standards. However, Microsoft this week announced that it would continue to use Word in Outlook 2010.
From Microsoft's standpoint, they are not interested in being standards based. They just want to make an email client that is easy for the client's to use and will leverage the tools that their clients already know - MS Word. I can completely understand this.
The issue of course is that from an HTML designer standpoint, many of the techniques that they are used to using fall flat in Outlook 2007 (and soon Outlook 2010) and actually can make nice emails look downright hideous. This means that either designers will need to fully accept that they need to change their techniques and ensure their emails use the lowest common denominator of HTML or they need to deal with the consequences of poor design.
Often times in email marketing the HTML designer is not the person actually sending out emails and does not try to tune their HTML for an email client. They are used to checking their designs in IE, Firefox and perhaps Opera or Chrome. If it looks good there, they are ready to "ship it".
A recent survey of Informz users found that only 25% of our users' main job in their organization was Web/IT with the majority involved in Marketing. This means that as an email marketing service provider we need to provide the high level tools in a non technical way. In this respect, I am with Microsoft; we need to provide HTML email creation tools that are as easy as Word to use.
I think we do a pretty good job of this already but we will have some important announcements later in the summer that will take us to this next level or "Word-like" ease of use. So even if Microsoft won't accommodate our need for standards, I understand their need for easy to use software.
