How to Add Background Images to Email Newsletters

When Microsoft decided to use its older HTML rendering software from Word in Outlook, as the means to display HTML email, some key HTML email functionality disappeared. In particular, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 do not display background images, which is used extensively in many email designs. They did in earlier versions of Outlook. At the same time, GMail has never fully displayed background images.

Campaign Monitor has an article, Add a Background Image to your Email in Two Simple Steps that describes two small technical fixes to make GMail and Microsoft Outlook 2007/2010 display background images. While they include a traditional CSS style declaration, most likely their fix only works with inline styles because GMail, in particular, strips out all but inline CSS. Be sure to cut up the Campaign Monitor CSS definitions and put them in the right place(s) in your HTML email.

URLs:

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/3170/adding-background-images-to-your-email-in-two-simple-steps/