HTML message with embedded pictures (MHTML)

MaxBulk Mailer allows you to send both HTML messages with online or inline pictures. The difference between the two methods comes from the way the pictures are added to the message.

Online pictures are not sent with the message but they are referred using a standard URL like for example http://www.mydomain.com/mypicture.jpg. It is the recipient e-mail reader software that will fetch those pictures silently from the given URLs and will display them along with the message.

Inline pictures however are sent with the message and are referred by name. That name has to match the name of the picture attachment you have added to the message. Inline pictures will be codified and embedded to the message to produce a MIME MHTML message.

When you design a web page with Golive or DreamWeaver and insert a picture, you insert a URL to that picture inside your HTML code. When you are finished and paste the code to MaxBulk Mailer you end with URLs that point to nowhere so you have to edit them. If you have added those pictures to your message as attachments and want them to be embedded, edit those URLs and replace them with the pictures names you have dropped. If the pictures are online, just type the right URLs.

Let's see an example, the following code contains one online picture:

It contains a URL to the picture: 'https://www.maxprog.com/pictures/cat.jpg'. If you paste that code to MaxBulk and want to embed the picture, you drop that picture to the attachment panel and modify the code to use the picture name rather than a URL:

Now we have a reference to 'cat.jpg'. This name matches the name of a file in the attachment panel. At delivery time, MaxBulk will embed the file with the message.

Note that you have to be very careful about the total size of your attachments when sending individual messages because you will send as many times that size during the delivery. That means sending 10Kb to 1,000 recipients will generate 10Mb traffic! With a 2Kb/s bandwidth it will take 1 hour and 25 minutes.

Also note that MHTML is a rather recent standard so it is understandable old software will never be able to understand it. This is a little MHTML compatibility list of e-mail reader software and Webmail systems: