Email Standards Project launched today. It’s all about bringing web standards support to e-mail clients by educating web designers and developers and a starting a dialogue with email client developers.

The current state of web standards support in email can best be described as dismal. It’s a throwback to the early days of the web with each client (both desktop and online) offering wildly varied levels of support for basic HTML and CSS. You can see the results of ESP’s client tests here.

It’s a grassroots movement spearheaded by the fine folks at Freshview, makers of Campaign Monitor, some of the easiest to use email newsletter software around.

Find out what you can do to help and follow the latest developments on the ESP blog.