A poorly rendered font could break the design of a beautifully crafted email. While marketers never fail to acknowledge the importance of email marketing, they almost never mention that typography counts too. If some words in your email don’t render properly, the design falls apart, and a potential customer has a bad user experience. Emails should be designed with email-safe fonts that look good on all email clients.
What are Email-Safe Fonts?
Email-safe fonts are fonts that successfully encode on all major email clients both web based (eg, Gmail, Yahoo) and desktop (eg, Outlook) as well as mobile apps (eg, the Apple Mail app and the default Android email client) ensuring your email body text displays consistently on any device and for any email service provider (ESP).
Here is a list of popular email-safe fonts:
1- Serif Fonts:
Serif fonts are characterized by small lines or “serifs” attached to the end of their strokes. They’re often seen as more formal or traditional.
- Times New Roman
- Georgia
2- Sans- serif Fonts:
Sans-serif fonts are cleaner and more modern, as they lack the small strokes or “serifs” at the end of letters. They’re highly popular for digital use because of their legibility.
- Arial
- Helvetica
- Verdana
- Tahoma
- Trebuchet MS
3- Monospace Fonts:
Monospace fonts have consistent character spacing, making them ideal for displaying code or where exact spacing is critical.
- Courier new
- Lucida Console
Why You Should Avoid Custom Web Fonts in Emails
Many email designers are tempted to use custom fonts, such as those provided by Google Fonts or Adobe Fonts, to create unique, branded emails. However, using custom fonts in emails can be risky.
While web fonts are commonly used in web design, they’re not supported in many email clients, particularly Outlook (desktop version) and some older versions of Yahoo and Gmail. This means that custom fonts will often revert to default fonts, leading to inconsistent designs.
If the email client doesn’t support a given font, it reverts to a default that can change the look of an email significantly. In order to avoid this, designers and marketers use a package of common fonts called web-safe or email-safe fonts that are available on most operating systems and devices.
Choosing the right font for your email campaigns can have a big impact on both design and readability. By sticking to email-safe fonts, and thoroughly testing your emails across different clients, you can ensure your message is presented clearly and consistently. While custom fonts offer exciting design possibilities, they come with risks, so use them wisely. Ultimately, the key to email typography success is balancing creativity with reliability to deliver the best possible experience for your audience.