Email Stationary

When you write a letter you normally do so on plain white paper. You can however use your own special stationary. Most companies use company stationary, which contains their company logo and contact details.

With email we normally send our email on a plain white background, but like in the paper world we can use our own personal email stationary. Most major email clients have the ability to use Email stationary and many have a collection of default stationary. Most stationary uses HTML. HTML is the language used to create web pages, and therefore email stationary is basically a web page. Because it is the same as a web page it can contain the same elements as a standard web page, hence it can contain images, backgrounds, coloured and unique fonts, and even sound.

Because it is the same as a web page you can even create it using a web page editor. There are however custom tools available and some email clients like outlook express even have the stationary creation tools built in.

The stationary serves as a template for your email and allows you to send attractive email, and even animated and talking email. You need to be very careful when using stationary as it is very easy to send unreadable emails because of a bad choice of background.

The main problem with using stationary is that because it is an HTML page the email client that receives it must be capable of receiving HTML email. Although most email clients are capable, some have the ability disabled as a security precaution.

Therefore it is a good idea not to rely solely on your stationary to provide the recipient with important contact details, in case they don't get them. So although it could be used in place of a standard signature file I would use it to augment the signature file rather than replace it.