compatibility problem in ie8

Hi
I have a  curious ie8 problem with a "if you cannot see this email correctly..." link on an email that links to a wordpress site.  When clicking on the link, the site initially comes up in ie8 in a non-compatibility mode and the styles go crazy. Needless to say, I don't have this problem in ie9 or any other browsers. I've tried playing with the
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="..." /> tag, but it doesn't seem to make any difference, although when I refresh the page, the problem disappears. Does anyone know of anything else I could try? Is there some way of forcing an initial refresh just for ie8 users?
Thanks,
AviR