Can I use the HTML background attribute?

The HTML background attribute is deprecated in HTML 4.01. The best practice in email design stipulates that you do not use background images. You can still code for them, but you might experience some issues with display in some email clients.

You can hardcode an absolute URL of an image in the background tag so that Acoustic Campaign does not handle the hosting of the image. For example, don't include the image in the .zip file, but reference a full image URL.

Important: We strongly advise against using any sort of background image.

When you import HTML code that contains background attributes of body or table, some browsers (such as IE9) and their DOM can cause Acoustic Campaign to add xt="SPCELL" code, which causes more problems. Essentially, it amounts to WYSIWYG and Acoustic Campaign not gracefully handling hosted images in the background properties of the HTML body tag or table cells.

To resolve the issue, after you import your file, remove the xt="SPCELL". Make sure you're defaulting into Source view.

Note: Don't click design view before you remove the xt="SPCELL" code.

Another possible workaround is to use Firefox, which seems to handle this issue better.