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You and I are in the minority. Imagine if Groupon sent their daily flyer in plain text: Click-through would plummet.

I used to get Slashdot sent to me as plain text. It was a sheer delight to read and I really miss having it formatted that way. I would pay a premium for it.

Maybe it is just that most people have never been exposed to properly formatted text emails?

I'm sure people find most of the websites they visit and the emails they read, filled with columns of extra garbage, to be cumbersome and difficult to read. Executives think that's what people want, but I doubt there has ever been an thorough examination of all the formats and their effects on people.

The reason those companies send HTML emails is because they convert better. It has nothing to do with "executives" liking them more. The deal and advertising businesses are very metrics driven and if text performed, they would use it. It doesn't do nearly as well, especially for products.

>I used to get Slashdot sent to me as plain text.

Comment nesting must have been awful. Or did you cheat and use pseudo-graphical characters to overcome the obvious limitation of plain-text for such a purpose?

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