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The History of Email and Email Design

Douglas Karr Last Updated: Thursday, May 11, 2017

1 minute read

44 years ago, Raymond Tomlinson was working on ARPANET (the U.S. Government’s precursor to the publicly available Internet), and invented email. It was a pretty big deal because up until that point, messages could only be sent and read on the same computer. This allowed a user and a destination separated by the & symbol. When he showed colleague Jerry Burchfiel, the response was:

Don’t tell anyone! This isn’t what we’re supposed to be working on.

The first email Ray Tomlinson sent was a test e-mail Tomlinson described as insignificant, something like “QWERTYUIOP”. Fast forward today and there are over 4 billion email accounts with 23% of them dedicated to businesses. It’s estimated that there will be approximately 200 billion emails sent this year alone with a continued growth of 3-5% every year according to the Radicati Group.

History of Email Design Changes

Email Monks has put together this great video on what features and layout support have been added to email over the years.

My only wish for email is that clients like Microsoft Outlook would upgrade their support for HTML5, CSS and video so that we could rid ourselves of all the complexities of getting emails to look good, play well, and fit across all screen sizes. Is that too much to ask?

Douglas Karr Last Updated: Thursday, May 11, 2017

1 minute read

Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of the Martech Zone and CEO of DK New Media. Douglas has helped dozens of successful MarTech startups, has assisted in the due diligence of over $5 bil in Martech acquisitions and investments, and continues to assist companies in implementing and automating their sales and marketing strategies. Douglas is an internationally recognized digital transformation and MarTech expert and speaker. Douglas is also a published author of a Dummie's guide and a business leadership book.

It all started as a book club.

Yes, I’m serious. I started my work on the web more than two decades ago. My first site was Helping Hand, which curated the best sites from around the web to help people with their computers and navigate resources on the Internet. Years later, I sold the domain to a company that helped folks quit smoking, one of my first big contracts.

I began blogging on Blogger and waxed poetic about everything from politics to Internet tools. I was all over the place and mostly wrote for myself – without much of an audience. I belonged to a Marketing Book club in Indianapolis that quickly grew out of control. Over time, I discovered that more and more of the group were coming to me for technology advice. The combination of my technology background and my business and marketing acumen was in high demand as the Internet rapidly changed the industry.

After reading Naked Conversations, I was motivated to better brand and control the content on the site. I also wanted more control over the look and feel of my blog, so I moved to my domain in 2006 and built my first WordPress site. Since I was focused on marketing technology, I didn’t want the domain with my name to get in the way, so I moved the site (painfully) to its new domain in 2008 where it’s grown ever since.

The Martech Zone is owned and operated by DK New Media, LLC, a company I started in 2009. After working with virtually every major online marketing department in my tenure at ExactTarget and launching Compendium, I knew there was a great demand for my expertise and guidance within such a complex industry.

DK New Media oversees my consulting, publications, podcasts, workshops, webinars, and speaking opportunities. Highbridge, my agency with two other partners, helps companies maximize their investment in sales, marketing, and related products. We offer integration, migration, training, strategic consulting, and custom development.

Thank you so much for your support over the years!

Douglas Karr
CEO, DK New Media