live email content

I have seen a few companies recently that are releasing "live" email content. This basically means that each time you open the email the content changes. I have looked into this and it appears that not only the image, but the text of these emails is also changing. . .

The only possibility that I have thought of to do this is with an iframe or changing images with the same url.

D开发者_JAVA技巧oes anyone have an idea of how this is being accomplished ? \

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It would be easiest to find out if you just looked into the source code of one of those live emails.

Otherwise the most likely solution are <iframe>s. The support in mail clients is not encompassing however: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/3219/do-iframes-work-in-email/

So I would assume this is mostly used for small areas, and/or with an <iframe ..><p>alternative content</p></iframe> area. That's the most likely approach to follow in lieu of scripting support.

The exchanging <img> variant is more widely supported, but harder to implement. You would need to take a screenshot of your website, and link it remotely in the mail. You can mitigate the non-clickability with an <area> but would have to ensure that your website screenshot doesn't change the layout then - because you can only ever adapt the remote image, not the sent html emails.

It's quite possible that both approaches might be combined. But it's quite some effort to provide an iframe and a static img screenshot as alternative. Only one thing is for sure, embedded Flash content can be ruled out for your "live" emails. http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/1974/the-truth-about-1/