Our clients love their e-cards, and we love creating them—they’re a great way to let your customers know you’re thinking about them. But whether we’re whipping up a New Year’s message or a Thanksgiving greeting, we hear the same question again and again from clients: Can I send this through Outlook?

The truth is, we shudder to think what might happen if those e-cards mixed with the average company’s email system. Emailing marketing materials, whether you’re sending some electronic holiday cheer or distributing your quarterly e-newsletter, works best when done through a professional email service. The email services we use here can handle anything you throw at them, whether it’s a 4,000-person distribution list or a bandwidth-clogging HTML design. Here’s why using a professional service for your e-blasts beats Outlook any day:

• Less stress for you and your server.

Outlook can only send mail to 250 addresses at a time, so if you have a large email list, you’ll be stuck at your computer screen for a while. Even if you don’t mind spending the time to do it, sending email with a design element inundates your server with huge amounts of information. If you’re not careful, you can crash it and do permanent damage.

• Your messages don’t lose their good looks.

Most electronic messages are designed with HTML, which doesn’t translate well when sent through Outlook. If you send an HTML message and the end user doesn’t also use Outlook, it’s going to look like gobbledygook to them.

• You’ll avoid the dreaded spam filter.

Sending an email to hundreds of people from Outlook is a surefire way to land in their junk folders. Email services, on the other hand, have established relationships with the companies that deliver your mail, so there’s a much better chance your message will end up in the recipient’s inbox.

After the time and effort you put into creating well-designed e-marketing materials, you don’t want the finished product to go astray. Using an email service is a better plan– for any season.