Refer-a-Friend From Plain-Text Email? Test Results Part Two

SUMMARY: It works! Thanks to help from Sherpa readers, our Tech Editor
Alexis Gutzman has discovered a way for you to add.

Thank you, once again, to the over-200 people who sent us their
results last week.

[For those of you joining us now, last week we asked readers to
test a link for us. Here's the full article:
http://www.emailsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=2168]

Two weeks ago, we asked you to test this:

mailto:?subject=Read%20This&body=http://www.ms0.org/s.cfm/11/2159

Then last week, based on mixed results with the first link, we
asked you to test this:

mailto:%20?subject=Read%20This&body=www.ms0.org/s.cfm/11/2159

Almost universally, clicking on the link we provided gave readers
a message with a blank (or ) TO address, a SUBJECT of
"Read This," and the link we provided in the message body.

Users of Lotus Notes 5 and earlier, users of Pegasus Mail, users
of Penguin Mail, users of Mail App for the Mac, and one Eudora
user got everything after subject= in their subject lines.

For the vast majority of mail clients and the overwhelming
majority of testers, the main problem identified was that the
link in the body of the newly created message was not clickable
either during the send, or when received. Some readers actually
sent themselves the message to see whether it might become
clickable when received.

==> Conclusion: Link above works in just about all email clients
to create a new message, but recipients would have to cut and
past the link into their browsers to use it.

Still Testing

Rich Tatum from Christianity Today suggested we go one step
further and encode the ":" (in http://) so that Eudora, which
didn't like the mailto tag – preferring to highlight only the
part of the link that began with http:// –, wouldn't notice that
there was an http:// in the original URL, and the rest of the
email clients, which wanted to see an http:// at the front of the
new link in the new message, would see the http:// and make it
clickable.

Please follow these steps:

1. Cl*i*ck this link below:
mailto:%20?subject=Read%20This&body=http%3A//www.ms0.org/s.cfm/11/2168

2. Does it open a new message window with the message body
populated with "www.ms0.org/s.cfm/11/2168"? Is that line
highlighted in blue (indicating it's a clickable link)?

Does the subject line read: "Read This"?

3. If yes, please drop us a line telling us your email client
(Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, Yahoo mail, etc.), your
operating system (Windows 98, Windows 2000, Mac OS 8, etc.),
and platform (PC, Mac). This link will create the message
for you:

mailto:alexisg@marketingsherpa.com?subject=It%20works%203

4. If no, please let us know what email client, operating
system, and platform you're using. You can write to Alexis,
our technology editor, at alexisg@marketingsherpa.com.
Please use a subject line of "Nope3." Please provide details
of what you do get.

We will report the results of this test here next week.

Refer-a-Friend From Plain-Text Email? Test Results Part Two

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