This guide will provide a quick reference to use when designing for email marketing. All of the major email browsers are listed, with versions, desktop and mobile variants.
All of the popular elements of email marketing design are included, with an indication of if they are fine to use, use with caution or cannot be used with each email reader.
Nowadays, we have access to a wide range of email browsers available for viewing our emails. As well of lots of different email browsers, we are all viewing emails on a variety of devices, from small mobile screens, through to 28" 4K resolutions. Up until relatively recently, we all viewied emails on desktop screens, that were invariably a standard size and we only used one email reader; typically Microsoft's Outlook.
Owing to the limitations of Outlook though, in recent years, lots of other email browsers have overtaken Outlook as the first choice for reading emails. We now have email readers available from Apple, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and a whole host of others.
Whilst it's great that we have a wide choice of which email readers to use, it means that when we are designing a mailer for email marketing, we need to take into consideration how our design will look on each one. An email that doesn't display properly will often result in a higher rate of unsuscribes and ultimately an increase in email bounces
Whilst there is quite a bit of uniformity with most of them, some email browers require careful consideration when designing your email marketing. Some of the design techniques that we take for granted when designing for webistes simply don't work with some email readers (mentioning no names Outlook).
To help make the design process a little easier, we have put together a handy guide to follow. The table gives you a quick email marketing design reference to follow, outlining which design techniques are compatible with which email readers.