Now, you can access multiple email accounts via your Hotmail account, provided that your other accounts allow POP access.

Of course, Hotmail is just now catching up, as Gmail has provided this functionality for a while now.

So how does this affect email marketers? Put simply, its going to make rendering HTML emails properly a little more difficult. For example, Gmail and Hotmail have slightly different HTML rendering practices. Gmail incorrectly renders the margin/padding/float CSS attributes, whereas Yahoo fully supports almost all HTML/CSS.

Savvy email marketers may be segmenting their lists based on the recipient’s domain, so that they can tailor the HTML for each domain to the inconsistent standards observed by each of the email providers and clients. The fact that recipients can now read Gmail email from their Hotmail account, and vice versa, now makes this kind of effort futile.

Progress is slow, but as soon as all email providers and client developers start abiding by the same standards, it will greatly facilitate proper delivery.