A designer hands over a handsome email. It looks right in a browser. Then it goes out, and on half the phones the columns collapse, the text shrinks and the images go missing. We are asked to rescue emails like this regularly.
Email is its own medium
Mail programs display messages using far older and stricter rules than web browsers, and each one behaves differently. Layout techniques that are routine on a website are ignored or mangled. The platform you send from can also rewrite parts of the message on the way out.
The usual causes
- The email was built like a web page and was never designed to adapt to a narrow screen.
- A fixed-width design is scaled down to fit, so the text becomes too small to read.
- Images are hosted somewhere temporary, or blocked until the reader allows them.
- It was tested in one mail program on one computer.
How to avoid the rescue
- Have the email built as an email from the start, with a layout meant to adapt to a phone.
- Host the images somewhere reliable and permanent, on a domain you control.
- Make sure the message still makes sense with images switched off.
- Test in the mail programs your audience uses before sending. There are dozens, and tools exist to check them together.
- Send a test to real phones and read it at arm’s length. If you have to zoom, so will your customers.
An hour of testing before the send is cheaper than an apology after it.
Related service: Websites & e-commerce.