How do I maketotally custom e-mails that everyone can see without downloadi

Question

I run a website made on iweb. It is http://Ostyn-Newman.com I send out periodic annoucements to several hundred clients announcing new products on the site. I currently use IPhoto to process photos and send them via e-mail from that application. They open new messages in Mail 1.3.11 This works fairly well and almost all of the recipients automatically see the photos and text without having to download them. Everyone except AOL reciepients that is. I segregate them out and send their messages directly from my webmail program.
This is fine and dandy except I really want to send more customized messages. I have tried making a page in Pages and saving it as a PDF and attaching to the messages instead of using the IPhoto method. This doesn't really work as most recipients have to download it to view it and then it is often a different size than I intend.
What I want to do is to make a killer looking announcement (that looks basically like an IWeb page with hyperlinks and all) that all recipients can instantly view without having to download and has all of the custom colors, fonts, links etc. that I want to put in. I know it is possible as I get advertisements from Toyota, Sony, Apple etc. that do this very thing. What application and processes do I need to be looking at to make this happen. Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

First, be aware that there is no way to guarantee that an email will look just like a web page to all recipients, since different email client apps process them differently. (For instance, Mail always displays what image files it can within the message, while others may display some or all as attachments.)
Moreover, while HTML formatted emails are similar to HTML formatted web pages, the formatting is not identical. Emails are sent with MIME formatting that controls content disposition & provides options that web pages don't, such as alternate representations (typically plain text & HTML versions) within the same transmitted message. By comparison, most complex web pages consist of many different files, all downloaded by a browser to compose a page. (If you are using Safari to view this, select "Activity" from the "Window" menu to see just how many different files were downloaded to display this web page. It is a lot more than you might think!)
For what you want to do, it may help to examine the raw source of the ads you want to emulate, to see how much of the message content is "embedded" (called "inline" in MIME terms) & how much is 'remote' -- that is, HTML links to files like with a web page (identified by "<href>" tags) -- plus what (if any) alternative versions they contain. Each option impacts appearance & download time, so it is something you should consider before deciding what is best for your clients & what app(s) you need.
To get an idea of some of the possibilities, try Googling "bulk email applications" or check out some of the links at Mac Email Marketing Software - About Email.