Mailto Link Not Working in Hotmail

Question

So I have an html email that I am creating for my company for an email campaign we are going to be sending soon for an organization we represent. It contains 2 primary links, one to email a person at the organization we represent, and one to go to the landing page on the site of the organization. The landing page link works fine, the mailto: link does not when the email is viewed from Hotmail. It works on other clients besides Hotmail including Gmail and Outlook.

This is not because the computer which I am testing on does not have an email client installed. It has Outlook 2010 installed and registered as the mailto application. When mailto links are clicked on other sites (not hotmail) they work great...outlook launches a new message window as it should and fills in the subject and email. When we went to test on Hotmail, it shows the mailto link in the status bar, but no action occurs when you click the link. It's as if the link was not a link at all.

This is the link we are trying to use: (edited slightly for privacy)

<div class="button"><a href="mailto:[email protected]?subject=Resident Requesting More Info">Email a Resident Advisor</a></div>

This is placed within an html table cell. It has some basic css styling applied (all embedded in the html email itself). The button class is just designed to make the link stand out in the email...give it a red border and bold the link.

To be much more clear:

Works:

Gmail - IE9, Chrome, Firefox

Outlook - worked.

Does not work:

Hotmail - All browsers tried

The email was sent using the preview function of CampaignMonitor (handled by our QA guy, I don't have access to it as I'm rather new to the company).

I just need to figure out a way to make this work. Thanks in advance.

Berkie

Answer 1

Two other programmer and I spent 2 days dealing with this problem earlier this week. I don't have the relevant links handy, but the long and short of the story is that this is a known issue and currently unresolved.

mailto: links will under no circumstance, work in Hotmail, they are removed or something.

We ultimately ended up adding copy instructing recipients to email [email protected] in lieu of clicking the link.

Trimble

Sigh...damn hotmail. Guess I'll keep looking for a way around it. Fortunately the email doesn't have to go out for a few days. – Berkie

Answer 2

Here's a possible solution I found at http://windowsxp.mvps.org/hmposturl.htm that I modified for my purposes. It would require sending unique creative with a custom link to only your Hotmail recipients but it seems to work for me. Here's the href string I used:

http://www.hotmail.msn.com/secure/start?action=compose&[email protected]&subject=My Subject Line&body=Email Body

Bail

Answer 3

This is a common problem with most webmail based systems. mailto: doesn't invoke them. Google mailto hotmail and you will find answers for Windows and for specific browsers. I think this will set it up for you

http://email.about.com/od/windowslivehotmailtips/qt/How_to_Make_Windows_Live_Hotmail_Your_Default_Email_Program.htm

Loriannlorianna

that definitely doesn't work (at least anymore). It now gets the outlook error : 'Sorry, there seems to be a problem with Outlook right now' – Rustication

Answer 4

Just add target='_blank'...use the 'a' html tag as...

<a href='mailto:Your MAILTO ID' target='_blank'>SOME Support</a>

This works in hotmail client, but it launch new browser instance additionally.

Lane

Answer 5

Known problem, I can confirm, is not working on Hotmail web mail only, rest of them work fine, we had the same problem here and we give up trying.

If you really really want that the only way is to use JavaScript, onClick change window location but that introduces a new dependency: JavaScript.

Ammadas