I've seen a lot of articles on it with varying data and results, but I think the answer is it depends on your audience and goals. Your intuition is dead-on and

I've seen a lot of articles on it with varying data and results, but I think the answer is it depends on your audience and goals. Your intuition is dead-on and is usually the main argument for plaintext emails. I run Hacker Newsletter (http://hackernewsletter.com http://hackernewsletter.com) and had looked into doing just plaintext, but found it was too hard to skim because of all the links. The other big factor is how much you want to track. For me, it is key to know what is popular so I can adjust what I pick over time to include what my subscribers like more.