Read-only email

Is it possible to send a read-only email to clients? I would like to prevent our clients from changing the terms of a sales offer. They are encouraged to forward the emails to their contacts, but I'd like to retain control over the contents of the email.
Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Tags: protected, read-only

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Permalink Reply by Richard Huffaker on December 10, 2008 at 3:23pm: Hi Richard,

There is no real way to make the HTML and text content of an email read only. The way email is structured simply wouldn't allow that.

There are a few approaches you could take here:

1. Create the entire content of your email out of images. Your recipients wouldn't be able to change or edit the images directly. However, image only and image heavy emails usually see lower response rates and are more likely to get caught by spam filters. This is not a great solution.

2. Put the terms of the offer up on your site, but do not reference them in the email. This way the offer is set in stone, and anyone who is forwarded the message will have to click a link to see the offer on your site.

3. Link to a PDF version of the offer that the recipient can download. This would not be nearly as easy to change as the content of the email message itself.

All the potential options to lock down your messaging carry with them a strong chance that less people would take action with your offer since they either have to take an extra step to see the terms or would be receiving the email in a less readable format. So there really isn't a great approach to achieve what you're looking to do.

Hope this info helps!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Richard Waldor on December 11, 2008 at 6:19am: Thanks for the reply -- your considered response clarifies the issue for us so that we can decide how to proceed the "safest" way!

Much obliged,

Rich; ▶ Reply to This