Hi all,

I'm new to this forum, and I searched around but couldn't find any information related to my specific question -- if it has been addressed elsewhere on this site, I apologize for it's repetition; and if you could please direct me to the thread, I would much appreciate it.

I'm confused about the successful creation of anchored links in email campaigns.

I've been building emailers with anchored links that only work when the emailer is [also] actually hosted on the client's server [.htm file as well as graphics].
[When someone clicks on the anchored link, a browser window opens, the emailer is loaded at the point of the anchor; the viewer can then continue to surf the 'emailer' [hosted on the server], and all the anchored links work]
__________________________________________________ ___
So the code looks like this:
<a href="http://www.clientSite.com/emailCampaigns/emailer-april2005/partnerEmailer.htm#1" target="_self">Message from CEO</a>

With the corresponding anchor:
<a name="1"></a>Message from CEO... etc.
__________________________________________________ ___

But then I disected some Yahoo! and other emailers where the links actually work within the email and don't take you to a new browser window with a hosted .htm file.

A sample is:

<A title=outbind://34-00000000ED92FF02CF8B694980D3261E83EBCE75C4DC2A00/#art1 href="#art1">Message from CEO</A>

With the corresponding anchor:
<A name=art1></A>Message from CEO... etc.
__________________________________________________ ___

I tested this 'title=outbind' code in my emailer and it worked!

My questions are:

1. How do you determine what that 'title=outbind' code should be? [The code differs from emailer to emailer]
2. Why did it work in my test? Was it a fluke?
3. Can I just copy and past this code into my emailer and expect it to work?
4. Why the difference in using or not using quotation marks in the anchor code?

I have a new client, and I'd like to be able to offer this second way of building the emailers, but I've exhausted all my resources... I've done searches on W3C and a number of other html/code sites/tutorials, but with no luck.

I hope I've explained this well enough, and if anyone can enlighten me, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance!
b4b

Just some info I've learned on creating emailers:

1. Remove all span tags [Outlook ignores span tags]
2. Use as many nested tables as possible, this allows more efficient use of id tags
3. If you test your emailers in outlook, open them in Word, send them, but when you close the file, do NOT 'save', because Word will add extra code that will screw up the emailer.

From what I know about anchored links, what's important is the href="#" part, not title, but that's just for html files not emails, so I could be totally wrong.

the "outbind" ref is a GUID reference to the cached copy of the file. It indicates that the URI referenced is outside the current location.

It will only happen if you are coding the links simply as www.sitename.tld rather than with the full http://www.sitename.tld when the outbind will replace the http: handler

uhm

Thanks lcl and ch.

I guess I'm not as bright as I thought I might be... I'm still at a loss as to how to build my file so the user can click on anchored links within the email itself, independent of having a browser window open that brings up a 'duplicate' of the emailer online in order for the 'anchor' function to work.

Simple answer is you can't.

using target="_self" should work ok for web-mail as the message is already in a browser. With email clients each one can (and do) behave differently and the behaviour can be changed in user preferences in many cases.

What is more important is the users of these clients will see whatever happens as normal, if you then have a message that does something different...
Well what would be your first reaction ???

U're right Chris. I get burned when people don't indicate that the link I'll be clicking on is a pdf... unless I'm surfing for the sheer joy of it, I see it as eating up my time.

I ended up setting it up in the usual way, tested it on my machine, the links work fine, we'll be testing it through salesforce.com, and the best I can do then is test it through outlook/and express, yahoo! and a webmail account. [I add a text version for programs that don't accept html].

Thanks again!
[btw: good sig]