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I wrote the story on the size limit issue you linked and have thoughts on the issue listed here. (Long story short: This whole issue is a byproduct of the lack

I wrote the story on the size limit issue you linked and have thoughts on the issue listed here. (Long story short: This whole issue is a byproduct of the lack of standardization in the email space, something highlighted by the use of tables in emails, which are another reason why emails are so large. Long story short, email is in need of modernization, which could lead to better options for tracking than tracking pixels, which are not anonymized enough for publisher use cases.) I agree that the amount of tracking going on in the Substack links is a bit aggressive, but I want to be careful to not put too much of the blame on them for the long links. Part of the problem is the service that Substack is using, Mailgun, is intended for transactional emails, rather than the newsletters that Substack is sending. My feeling is that Substack ramped up using Mailgun but probably needs to start building their own tech for doing this, because it’s clearly not suited for the Substack use case. Thanks for sending the link—it is super-relevant to this issue.

snowwrestler 5y ago
Indeed, tables and in-line styles are industry standard email coding practices, and the main reasons email character count balloons. Tracking links are a tiny factor, unless maybe the email is stuffed with links. (I doubt Casey’s are.) Thank you for figuring out that character limit. We redesigned and recoded a template to get under it. And tables and in-line styling are industry standard for one reason: Microsoft Outlook. It still uses the ancient and horrible HTML rendering engine from MS Word, instead of a modern HTML engine like literally everybody else uses. And a ton of senders care about Outlook because so many high-value subscribers use it (e.g. corporate staff at big companies). The other factor is that the use of email to send long-form content is pretty recent. For a long time before, emails were either personal, marketing, or publishing with “click to read full article.” All pretty short.
- shortformblog 5y ago
  When I started my newsletter, I was seemingly the only person using email for long-form. Now everyone’s doing it. The situation with Outlook should hopefully improve in the next year, as Microsoft is planning to make different versions of Outlook work basically the same, with the web version as the baseline: https://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-wants-to-unite-all-its-email-programs-into-one-outlook https://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-wants-to-unite-all-... The downside of this whole saga with Apple is that other than this Apple basically renders emails better than just about every other service—rendering essentially using the Safari engine. Gmail has improved but inlining CSS is still required because of it. If everyone was working to a unified standard life would be easier for email senders … possibly even recipients.
- ryantgtg 5y ago
  Casey’s are fairly stuffed with links. The format is generally: main article; multiple sets of links to other articles; funny tweets. He might be more mindful these days of how many links he includes, because at the beginning he seemed quite alarmed that many readers couldn’t see the whole email without a jump.

snowwrestler 5y ago

Indeed, tables and in-line styles are industry standard email coding practices, and the main reasons email character count balloons. Tracking links are a tiny factor, unless maybe the email is stuffed with links. (I doubt Casey’s are.) Thank you for figuring out that character limit. We redesigned and recoded a template to get under it. And tables and in-line styling are industry standard for one reason: Microsoft Outlook. It still uses the ancient and horrible HTML rendering engine from MS Word, instead of a modern HTML engine like literally everybody else uses. And a ton of senders care about Outlook because so many high-value subscribers use it (e.g. corporate staff at big companies). The other factor is that the use of email to send long-form content is pretty recent. For a long time before, emails were either personal, marketing, or publishing with “click to read full article.” All pretty short.

shortformblog 5y ago
When I started my newsletter, I was seemingly the only person using email for long-form. Now everyone’s doing it. The situation with Outlook should hopefully improve in the next year, as Microsoft is planning to make different versions of Outlook work basically the same, with the web version as the baseline: https://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-wants-to-unite-all-its-email-programs-into-one-outlook https://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-wants-to-unite-all-... The downside of this whole saga with Apple is that other than this Apple basically renders emails better than just about every other service—rendering essentially using the Safari engine. Gmail has improved but inlining CSS is still required because of it. If everyone was working to a unified standard life would be easier for email senders … possibly even recipients.
ryantgtg 5y ago
Casey’s are fairly stuffed with links. The format is generally: main article; multiple sets of links to other articles; funny tweets. He might be more mindful these days of how many links he includes, because at the beginning he seemed quite alarmed that many readers couldn’t see the whole email without a jump.