Email Template design

Email template design has always been a particularly tricky spot when it comes to mail client support.

Recently a client asked me to design them a template for a signature with complex overlapping images. On the web that’s a very easy thing to do. But in the email space layers are poorly supported.

Quirky Mail clients

Even after years I still find it odd that mail clients have grown more quirky in their support of web standards. We’re all still coding like it’s the late 90’s for email.

It’s 2021 and we’re really in need more modern features on email clients. But the thing we need most is standardized support between mail clients.

Interestingly Mozilla just dropped several critical CSS features that enabled responsive designs. So Responsive mail now gets to display in mobile view on Thunderbird. Luckily that’s a small portion of the market right now.

Outlook has also not grown as much as I’d hoped over the past decade. But clearly still takes the lead on the Desktop front.

Although the recent widespread Exchange server hacks gives reason for pause if you where the admin. But I digress.

Should I embed, link, attach that image?

Most notably embedding, attaching or linking images is supported by differently accross email clients with links being best supported and most hidden due to “privacy warnings”.

KISS

Bottom line. When it comes to email design you can go to the moon and back if you’ve got the budget. Otherwise keeping to highly supported simpler layouts will come back in budget every time.

This reminds me of a good project principle.

Cheap, Good, Fast. Pick two.

Some neat posibillities

I do still create some pretty neat things these days in email though, like including sliders and menus and faq sections in mail. And buttons that work right out the gate. So it’s not all lost.

However my most favorite email feature is still conscise writing and good formatting. Without this foundation it’s pretty hard to build a good mail.