Ensuring an email campaign has a look and feel that’s consistent with their brand is one of the major concerns our clients have. While other design elements are important, choosing the right font (or fonts) to use is especially crucial because it reflects the tone of the message you are trying to deliver.
Due to limitations in HTML email, some specific fonts that you may want to use might not be viewable on all devices. Therefore, we recommend clients use email-safe fonts, where these fonts are installed in almost every email client. Here are a few questions people have asked in the past:
Can I save my content as images so I can keep my brand fonts in an email?
Well, you could, but it’s not the best way to do it. Here’s why:
1) Email clients often block images by default, and your customers won’t be able to view message content at first glance. Instead, they’ll see white boxes.
2) Remember that the more images you have in your email, the more time it will take to load.
Why is it important to use email-safe fonts in email?
As mentioned above, images are blocked by default for most email clients and content becomes the first thing your customers see. This is why you want your message to display in HTML text to deliver your message as clearly as possible before any images are loaded.
Though there are limits on the types of font you can choose, you can still make your email creative and memorable by differentiating the font size and color. Below is a list of email-safe fonts that you can use for your HTML email campaign.
1 Georgia and Trebuchet MS are bundled with Windows 2000/XP and they are also included in the IE font pack (and bundled with other MS applications), so they are quite common in Windows 98 systems.
2 Symbolic fonts are only displayed in Internet Explorer. In other browsers, a font substitute is used instead (although the Symbol font does work in Opera and the Webdings works in Safari).
3 Book Antiqua is almost exactly the same font as Palatino Linotype. Palatino Linotype is included in Windows 2000/XP while Book Antiqua was bundled with Windows 98.
4 These fonts are not TrueType fonts but bitmap fonts, so they won’t look well when using some font sizes (they are designed for 8, 10, 12, 14, 18 and 24 point sizes at 96 DPI).
5 These fonts work in Safari but only when using the normal font style, and not with bold or italic styles. Comic Sans MS works in bold but not in italic. Other Mac browsers seem to emulate properly the styles that are not provided by the font.
6 These fonts are present in Mac OS X only if Classic is installed.
Kaman is currently a website designer based in the New York City office. She has worked on different kinds of projects in the past including web page design, banner advertisements, and email marketing design ranging from real estate to cosmetics industry. Kaman studied Communication Design and earned her B.Tech Degree in 2011 from New York City College of Technology.