It appears that you're talking about a pretty lightweight system. Would it support MIME/HTML email? I know that any "solicited bulk email" system that BerkleeMusic would actually end up using will have to support HTML, as well as (yes) inlined telltale images to track readership. The latter part sounds like it would be pretty easy to bolt on assuming the spam system you propose supports MIME email, though I wonder if the code would be more generally useful than just to BerkleeMusic? Whether you want to admit it or not... are your clients asking for this? If they've got marketing departments, the answer is almost certainly "yes". Without making any value judgement, this is an accepted marketing practice, and one that OACS should probably support if we hope to gain the acceptance of a broad spectrum of potential clients without having to hack the functionality on a one-off basis.
Of course, this brings up the obvious user preference issue over HTML v. text. I think a user should be able to pick text only notifications, but the scoping of that preference is probably a very touchy issue depending on the business logic of your site (particularly if your site uses the telltale image approach). Maybe it's safe to say that this pref could be global to all actual "bulk email" as, I assume, this package has nothing to do with bboard notifications, etc, and is more along the lines of newsletters and the like.
