We owe this tradition to our dear friend and contributor Jay Oram of ActionRocket who first showed us how to add wintry vibes in email campaigns six years ago. Be sure to check out more of Jay and the ActionRocket team’s work – you’ll be inspired to go further with email.

‘Tis the season for surprising and delighting your subscribers, and this is a fun way to do it.

Can ChatGPT code falling snow for HTML emails?

Just for kicks, we decided to ask ChatGPT if it knew how to code falling snowflakes in an HTML email. Here’s the reply we received:

You’re not exactly wrong, ChatGPT, but you’re not trying hard enough. Sure, we could have used a different prompt and kept trying, but it’s the busy holiday season. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

The AI answer went on to provide a couple code snippets using a GIF as a background or an inline SVG. But we’re talking about something different here.

This tutorial shows you how to get falling snowflakes in the foreground of your email using CSS animations. The result is an email campaign with some depth of field, almost giving it a 3D effect. That may be overstating things just a little – but it’s pretty cool.

How an animated snowflake effect looks in email

Take a look at the email newsletter Jay coded up for us back in the day. We’re willing to bet most of the emails you opened over Black Friday and Cyber Monday did not include little snowflakes gently falling down your screen. If they did… we’re also willing to bet they learned how here.

This isn’t the sort of thing you expect to see in a typical newsletter or email promotion. But here’s the thing… Once you’ve shattered your subscribers’ expectations, you’ve set the stage for even more inbox surprises.

That could very well mean higher open rates and increased email engagement. Now you’re subscribers will be wondering what they might find the next time they check out your email marketing campaigns.

You know how a gift always looks better with a bow on top? Think of this as that finishing touch that makes opening an email come with a little holiday magic.

Email client support for CSS animations

Unfortunately, nothing in email development is perfect. This technique uses CSS animation and keyframes. According to CanIEmail.com, these are only supported in clients using WebKit as the rendering engine, which is mainly Apple Mail and Outlook for Mac as well as Samsung and Thunderbird.

But if you check out your email analytics, that could be significant portion of your email subscribers. You’ll find out how to target clients that support CSS animations

Standing out in the inbox is a never-ending challenge. Putting in a little extra effort in this way makes your emails memorable. But enough with the fluff. Let’s turn things over to Jay Oram and find out how to let it snow. Here’s his animated snowflake tutorial for email developers looking to spread holiday cheer.

Setting up the snowflake CSS animation

The snow effect is essentially a snowflake or shape in a div that you animate using CSS. This technique moves the image from the top to the bottom of a container div you place around your email tables.

CSS animations work on a range of email clients including iOS, Apple Mail, Android Native Mail and Outlook for Mac. The snow animation won’t display on other email clients, so you don’t need to provide a fallback.

First, we set up the media query to detect the webkit, that will support the CSS animation.

                            

                                @media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 0) {
}
                            
                        

Next, we set up the container the snow will be in.

                            

                                .snowcontainer{
  position:relative;
  width:100%;
  overflow:visible;
}
                            
                        

Creating your snowflakes

We then need to define the snow. The simplest way to do this is to use a shape that doesn’t need an image, such as a square. You can create a square by setting height: 18px by width: 18px and setting a border-radius that is half the height (to gain a perfect circle), border-radius: 9px. Set the position:absolute  so the snow will be positioned within the container and top: -20px to start the animation before it enters the snowcontainer. Finally, add a background-color to set the color of the shape.

It looks like this:

Here’s the code for the shape snowflake:

                            

                                .snow{
            height: 18px;
            border-radius: 9px;
            width: 18px;
            position: absolute;
            top: -20px;
            background-color: #ffffff;
      }
                            
                        

Another way to add a snowflake is to add a background image. This technique is similar to to the square technique above, but it uses a background-image and no border-radius. With these changes, the snowflake will appear like this:

Here’s the code for the image snowflake:

                            

                                .snowimage{
  /* size of image */
  height:18px;
  width:18px;
  /* absolute - relative to the container div */
  position:absolute;
  /* Where animation starts */
  top:-20px;
  /* image link */
  background-image:url('images/snowflake.png');
}
                            
                        

Setting the background-image as a .png means the snowflake will have a transparent background and show the content through it. If you need some snowflake inspiration, check out the Noun Project’s snowflake icons.

Animating your snowflakes

With the code as is, we just have some shapes within a <div>. To animate them, we can put together a shortened version of an animation. See below:

                            

                                .snow1{
  animation: snow1 5s linear 0s infinite;
 }
 /* animation: Name of animation / length of animation / timing function
(linear = same speed from beginning to end) / delay (time between
animation end and start) / number of times */
                            
                        

This animation is called snow1. We define the length of the animation as 5s (five seconds) and the linear timing function. The linear timing number keeps the animation the same speed throughout – 0s (zero seconds) is the delay before the animation starts again. Finally, we include the number of times the animation will run (infinite).

By creating a few different animations with slightly different lengths and delay time, the snow will fall at random.

                            

                                .snow2{
  animation: snow2 6s linear 1s infinite;
 }
 .snow3{
  animation: snow3 7s linear 2s infinite;
 }
                            
                        

Next, we set up the keyframe animations to dictate where the snowflake will move to and from.

                            

                                @keyframes snow1
 {
  0% { top:0%;left:50%; }
  100% { top:100%;left:65%; }
 }
                            
                        

At the start of the animation (0%), we position the snowflake at the top of the div (0%) and 50% from the left. At the end of the animation (100%) the snowflake is 100% from the top and 65% from the left.

By setting the start and end points slightly different in each animation, the snow will seem to appear more at random.

                            

                                @keyframes snow2
 {
  0% { top:0%;left:30%; }
  100% { top:100%;left:25%; }
 }
 @keyframes snow3
 {
  0% { top:0%;left:70%; }
  100% { top:100%;left:60%; }
 }
                            
                        

HTML for the snowflake animation

Once you’ve created the CSS animation, you’ll need to add this effect to your email using HTML. To create this animation technique, the first bit of HTML you need is a <div> to open the snow container. You can set the height and width of the container to establish where the snow will show. For example:

                            

                                <div class="snowcontainer" style="width: 100%; height: 500px;">
                            
                        

Next, each individual snowdrop needs to be set. To do this, start with a <div> with the class of the snowimage or snow as set up in your CSS. Follow that with the name of the animation (e.g. snow1). The code should look like this:

                            

                                <div class="snowimage snow1"></div>
                            
                        

Then, add in all the snowdrops and animations within the snow container. See below:

                            

                                <div class="snowcontainer" style="height: 500px;">
  <div class="snowimage snow1"></div>
  <div class="snow snow2"></div>
  <div class="snow snow3"></div>
                            
                        

Place all your email content you would like below your snowdrops and finish with a closing </div> to end the snowcontainer.

Get all the code and see it in action from Jay Oram on CodePen.

Other ways to use this CSS animation in emails

Thanks again to Jay Oram of ActionRocket for the tutorial and code snippets above.

Christmas only comes once a year, but you can use this CSS animation all year long if you put your creativity cap on. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Autumn leaves for fall themed emails. This could be a way to have fun with back-to-school email marketing.
• Colorful falling confetti to celebrate just about anything, including birthdays, anniversaries, and other milestone emails.
• Matrix-style raining code could be a memorable way to enhance emails to a tech-savvy audience.

It can also be raining cats and dogs, or raining men (hallelujah), or turkeys or frogs could be falling out of the sky. Heck… you can drop tons of little poop emojis in emails if that’s your thing.

Take your emails to the next level…

Of course, this is the kind of things that stops being surprising and could easily start to get annoying if you over use it. So, if you want some other ideas for creating engaging emails, check out these classic episodes of Notes from the Dev: Video Edition with Megan Boshuyzen.

Rollover images are a simple yet impactful way to add interactivity into email. Nout Boctor-Smith shows you how to pull it off.

For more advanced interactivity, Emre Demirel showed us how he gamified an email with a rock, paper, scissors you can play in the inbox.

Jay Oram brought us even more inbox fun with a Wordle game for email. And you can follow along as Megan Boshuyzen explains how she coded her award-winning interactive email for Email Camp: Road Trip Edition.

The post Let it Snow: How to Use CSS Animations in Holiday Emails appeared first on Email on Acid.

Usually, people make resolutions for self improvement. While trying to be a better person is a worthy endeavor, how about striving to be a better email geek? Setting your email marketing goals for 2025 can help you do that.

There’s no doubt that some of these goals will look familiar. They’re almost as perennial as going to the gym more often, cutting back on carbs, and not using the word “literally” all the time. But bear with us as we explain exactly why these five areas of email geek improvement should be on your list this year. (We’ve got research to back it all up.)

1. Improve your email accessibility

This is an email marketing goal that 99.9% of us should think seriously about. Literally.

For the third year in a row, the Email Markup Consortium (EMC) conducted a sweeping study that found 99.97% of emails it analyzed had accessibility issues defined as “Serious” or “Critical.”

Some of those email accessibility issues include:

• Failing to use the <lang> attribute.
• Forgetting to set the role of <table>s to presentation or none.
• Not writing alternative text for all important images.
• Relying on color to identify links in emails.

The good news is that these issues and many others are easy to fix. Email teams just need to prioritize email accessibility in 2025.

Why this email marketing goal matters

Many email accessibility improvements support the inbox experiences of subscribers using screen reading software to engage with your campaigns. However, designing and coding accessible emails makes it easier for everyone to engage with what you’re sending – not just those with vision or mobility impairments. Improving accessibility leads to better overall email engagement.

Another reason accessibility is an important email marketing goal involves laws both old and new. In the U.S., we already have the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In 2025, the European Union will also enact accessibility legislation. The EU Accessibility Act mandates that online experiences like email be accessible for people with disabilities.

Check out Megan Boshuyzen’s comprehensive guide to email accessbility for expert advice. Sinch Email on Acid provides Accessibility Checks as part of our email QA platform. You can also get accessibility testing features with Parcel’s free plan.

Check out an on-demand session from Email Camp 2024 where Megan interviews EMC admins Naomi West and Alice Li about the 2024 Accessibility Report.

2. Be less annoying and more relevant

We’re not trying to say your beautiful email campaigns are annoying… but maybe some of your subscribers are starting to feel that way.

While accessible emails are one way to be conscientious of contacts with specific needs, this email marketing goal applies to everyone on your list. We all know that inboxes are cluttered and people are busy, yet brands still manage to get plenty of ROI from email marketing. However, if we overdo it and fail to consider the needs of recipients, email becomes a less effective channel.

People stop engaging and start ignoring emails that do not resonate. Want to make a change in 2025? List segmentation, A/B testing, meaningful personalizations, email preference centers, and carefully considering your sending cadence are all ways to make your email strategy more relevant (and less annoying).

Why this email marketing goal matters

Sinch Mailjet surveyed consumers around the world for the report The path to email engagement 2024. Results reveal that these are the top three reason why people choose to unsubscribe from a brand’s emails:

1. Too many messages from the brand (19.8%)
2. No longer interested in the offerings (17.9%)
3. Email content is irrelevant to me (17.3%)

Combined, those three reasons for unsubscribing from a brand’s emails represent 55% of the total. However, other reasons on the list also reflect things that annoy and frustrate subscribers.

Keeping people engaged with relevant content keeps them from unsubscribing. But once your emails get annoying, even contacts who opted in could decide to make a spam complaint. You don’t want that to happen.

In 2024, new sender requirements from Gmail and Yahoo clarified the threshold mailbox providers use to decide when enough is enough. They say all senders should try to maintain a spam complaint rate below 0.1%. That’s just one complaint for every 1,000 emails. Furthermore, your complaint rate should never reach or exceed 0.3%. At that point, mailbox providers will likely see you as a spammer.

3. Drop the dead weight from your email list

Hanging on to subscribers who don’t want what you’re sending them is like clinging to a relationship that’s gone sour. While many New Year’s resolutions involve dropping a few pounds, your email marketing goals for 2025 should include a plan to lose those unengaged contacts.

After that, you should strive to maintain a healthy email list. Think of it like losing the weight and keeping it off. One way to accomplish this is with an email sunset policy.

With a sunset policy, you remove subscribers who haven’t engaged with your emails after a specific period of time. You can also segment those contacts on a different list and simply send them fewer emails.

When Sinch Mailgun surveyed senders about their list building and hygiene practices, they found that only around 24% of respondents use a sunset policy.

Why this email marketing goal matters

A list with outdated and unresponsive contacts drags down your email engagement metrics. Mailbox providers will notice if not enough people are opening and clicking your campaigns. Good engagement is a positive signal that boosts your sender reputation. But low engagement suggests people don’t like and don’t want your emails.

That’s why proactively unsubscribing contacts who stopped engaging makes a lot of sense.

In the video below, Sinch Mailgun deliverability experts Nick Schafer and Ashley Rodriguez explain how sunset policies work and why they should be part of your list hygiene process.

4. Strengthen your email authentication practices

This kind of strength building involves no weightlifting at all. However, you may need someone in your organization with technical expertise and knowledge of email authentication protocols.

Google and Yahoo put the spotlight on email authentication practices this year when they announced that SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) would be a requirement for all senders. Plus, the mailbox providers also wanted bulk senders to start using DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance).

The goal of these authentication requirements was to make the email inbox a safer place for users of Gmail and Yahoo Mail. Google’s Neil Kumaran told cyber security writer Davey Winder it worked. Here’s what Gmail is seeing since enforcing the new bulk sender requirements:

• 65% reduction in unauthenticated messages sent to Gmail users.
• 50% more bulk senders started following best security practices.
• 265 billion fewer unauthenticated messages sent in 2024.

Why this email marketing goal matters

Email authentication protocols are at the frontlines of the fight against phishing attacks in the inbox. DMARC in particular is very good at preventing email spoofing. That’s when bad actors impersonate your brand. Stronger authentication protects both your subscribers and your brand’s reputation.

However, Gmail and Yahoo only required that senders use a DMARC policy of p=none at a minimum. The problem is – the p=none policy tells mailbox providers not to do anything with messages that fail SPF and DKIM authentication. That means malicious emails could still make it to the inbox, and your sending domain still isn’t fully protected.

Unfortunately, many subscribers are content with doing the bare minimum. Sinch Mailgun’s State of email deliverability 2025 report found 61.2% of those currently using DMARC with p=none won’t enforce a stronger policy unless it’s required. An additional 13% have no plans to update at all.

If you’re not enforcing DMARC with policy of p=quarantine or p=reject, that should be one of your email marketing goals this year. And if you don’t, there’s a very good chance Google and Yahoo will make DMARC enforcement a requirement soon.

In fact, that’s exactly what people in the know from those companies told us during Email Camp 2024. Check out the panel discussion with Marcel Becker of Yahoo and Dan Givol of Google to hear for yourself.

5. Expand your communication horizons

New Year’s resolutions that encourage you to travel and explore, pick up a new hobby, or learn something new are often the most fun and fulfilling. While email geeks love email, 2025 may be the year to break out of the inbox and experiment with other communication channels. It’s always smart to diversify your skillset.

Don’t get us wrong. Email is still relevant. It’s just that there are also other options that certain subscribers may sometimes prefer or may be more ideal in specific situations. For example, SMS can be a faster, easier way to receive 2FA messages and one-time passcodes (OTPs). Brands need to determine the right customer communication mix for the people they’re serving and the purpose of the message.

In many cases, email and SMS marketing make a really good pair. They can complement each other as part of the same campaign or automation. The art and heart of customer communication from Sinch also found that email and SMS are the most preferred channels among consumers.

If you use email and SMS/MMS for marketing and customer communications you already have your bases pretty well covered. Plus, for small businesses looking to expand their strategy, SMS can be very affordable.

Why this email marketing goal matters

Beyond email and SMS, there are other emerging communication channels that are worth exploring. For example, adoption of WhatsApp in the U.S. is increasing, and it’s already quite popular in other countries.

There is also RCS (Rich Communication Services) to consider. This protocol is poised to take text messaging to a new level. In 2024, Apple joined Android in supporting RCS with iOS 18. While iPhone users are already noticing a better texting experience, brands are getting excited about RBM (RCS Business Messaging).

RBM campaigns have the potential to increase trust, branding initiatives, and interactivity through mobile messaging. Imagine all the things you’d like to do with an interactive email but are way too hard. There’s a good chance you could do it with an RBM campaign.

Learn more about what RCS has to offer from Katie Brennan and Isabella Rahm in this exclusive presentation from Email Camp 2024.

Reach your email marketing goals in 2025

People use all sorts of tools and tricks to help them stick with their New Year’s resolutions. From apps that track your progress to accountability partners, anything that keeps your eye on the prize is a worthy investment.

You need the right tools and partners to help you reach your email marketing goals too. Sinch’s product portfolio has what you need. Literally:

• Sinch Email on Acid is here to help you deliver perfection (or as close as you can get) with an email QA platform equipped with everything from 100+ client and device previews to accessibility checks. And every plan comes with unlimited testing.
• Sinch Mailjet is a versatile email service provider (ESP) that’s ideal for many marketing teams. Take advantage of features like forms and landing pages to grow your list the right way, and use Mailjet’s AI assistant to boost your productivity and creativity.
• Mailgun Optimize is a complete email deliverability suite from Sinch Mailgun with a variety of tools built to help you reach the inbox. That includes reputation monitoring, email validations, and inbox placement reports that predict your deliverability before you hit send.

Looking to expand your approach to customer communications in 2025? Sinch can support your organization’s needs as you pursue an omnichannel communication strategy. You can also take a free evaluation to learn more about where you can enhance the way you reach your customers.

The post 5 Email Marketing Goals for 2025 appeared first on Email on Acid.

When Google and Yahoo announced new requirements for bulk senders this year, there was a big focus on using email authentication protocols. That includes:

1. SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
2. DKIM (Domain-keys Identified Mail)
3. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance)

As it now stands, every sender needs to be using SPF and DKIM, and bulk senders need to implement DMARC with a minimum policy of p=none. Fail to do so and you may not be able to reach Gmail and Yahoo Mail contacts. Encouraging more senders to adopt DMARC has been a top priority for major mailbox providers. This new requirement pushes senders in that direction, and it seems to be working.

Sinch Mailgun’s new report, State of email deliverability 2025, found an 11% increase DMARC usage compared to its previous report. The problem is, a lot of senders only want to do the bare minimum to meet the new requirements. Unfortunately, that means they’re not getting the most out of DMARC.

What is DMARC and what does it do?

Before we get too far, let’s review how DMARC works alongside other email authentication methods (SPF and DKIM).

When used together, these three DNS TXT records are an effective way to stop email spoofing. That’s because they help mailbox providers (like Gmail and Yahoo) verify the identity of a sender before accepting or rejecting a message.

The main purpose of DMARC is to check for both SPF and DKIM alignment and then advise mailbox providers on what to do with messages that fail authentication.

This protects sending domains from unauthorized use while making it easier for receiving mail servers to verify the identity of the sender. That’s why DMARC helps prevent phishing, business email compromises (BECs), and other email scams.

How DMARC works with SPF and DKIM

SPF and DMARC check for different things. Here’s a quick explanation of how they work:

• SPF is a list of hostnames and IP addresses published on your DNS that are approved to send mail for your domain. For example, this may include a subdomain used for sending email or a shared IP your ESP has added you to.
• DKIM verifies the identity of a sender using an encrypted digital signature or private key that matches a public key on a sending domain’s DNS. DKIM also ensures messages are not altered during transit.

DMARC combines the powers of SPF and DKIM into the most effective way to thwart email phishing.

What is a DMARC policy?

After finding out whether SPF and DKIM pass or fail, a DMARC policy informs mailbox providers as to how messages should be filtered when they fail authentication. Email authentication failures may also be described as SPF or DKIM not being aligned.

Senders have three DMARC policy options:

1. p=none – This DMARC policy tells mailbox providers not to do anything with messages that fail authentication. It means potentially malicious email spoofing a domain could land in the inbox.
2. p=quarantine – This DMARC policy tells mailbox providers they should filter messages that fail authentication into the spam or junk folder, preventing them from reaching the inbox.
3. p=reject – This DMARC policy tells mailbox provider not to accept any messages that fail authentication. Failures are blocked from reaching any folder.

DMARC also provides regular reporting to senders on authentication failures and who is attempting to send mail on behalf of their domain. These reports are available with a p=none policy. However, a DMARC policy of none does nothing to make the inbox safer. Sinch Mailgun deliverability experts explain exactly why in the video below:

In an ideal world, you’d only use p=none while you set up and test DMARC implementation. Then, you’d move to a DMARC policy of quarantine or reject to actually enforce the specification. A policy of none does nothing to protect the inbox from bad actors. Protecting their users by making the inbox safer was one of Google and Yahoo’s main objectives. So, why did they choose to require only a p=none DMARC policy? We’ll get to that. First, let’s check out some stats.

Statistics on DMARC policies in 2024

When Sinch Mailgun surveyed senders for its latest deliverability report, it took a closer look at both how senders responded to the new requirements (aka Yahoogle) as well as trends in email authentication practices among senders across the globe.

Among senders who made changes to their email programs to comply with new bulk sender requirements, nearly 80% updated their email authentication protocols. Mailgun also found high awareness and adoption rates for SPF and DKIM with more than 66% of all senders knowing they used both protocols while 25% were unsure and the rest used one or the other.

DMARC adoption is not quite as strong, but there were definite improvements from Mailgun’s 2023 findings. Results show overall DMARC adoptions increased from less than 43% in 2023 to nearly 54% in 2024 with a notable decrease in the percentage of senders who were unsure about DMARC usage.

Of course, smaller senders may not need to comply with this new rule. While DMARC is highly recommended for all senders, it’s only required for bulk senders with daily volumes around 5,000 messages. When Mailgun broke down DMARC adoption by send volume, results show around 70% of higher volume senders use DMARC.

Which DMARC policies are senders using?

Sinch Mailgun’s State of email deliverability 2025 found that p=none is the most common DMARC policy among all senders. While nearly 23% of senders used p=none in 2023, almost 32% were using the policy in 2024. It would appear that a lot of the growth in DMARC adoption came in that area.

So, are all of these senders just in a testing phase after setting up DMARC for the first time? Mailgun’s survey results do not make it look that way.

Among those using a DMARC policy of p=none, a combined 25% say they plan to begin enforcing DMARC with a stronger policy soon. However, nearly 75% of senders using a DMARC policy of none have no plans to update to quarantine or reject any time soon.

More than 61% of senders say they’ll only start enforcing DMARC if mailbox providers make it a requirement. The reality is — that’s exactly what’s going to happen sooner or later.

What Google and Yahoo want for DMARC policies in 2025

The truth is, the DMARC with p=none requirement is only a first step. Mailbox providers just wanted more senders to start implementing DMARC. Once those records are in place, it is very likely that a policy of either p=quarantine or p=reject will be required in the near future (at least for bulk email senders).

In a webinar with Sinch Mailgun, Marcel Becker of Yahoo confirmed this approach saying:

“The end goal is ideally a policy of p=reject. That’s what DMARC is for. Ensuring that your domain cannot be spoofed and protecting our mutual customers from abuse.”

Marcel Becker Senior Director of Product at Yahoo

For more insights straight from Gmail and Yahoo, get key takeaways from Mailgun’s talk with Marcel Becker and Anu Yamunan who is the Director of Product for Anti-Abuse & Safety at Google. You can also watch an Email Camp 2024 panel session with Marcel as well as Google’s Dan Givol.

To be clear… a p=none policy is the minimum requirement. Mailbox providers would much rather have senders enforcing DMARC with a stronger policy.

Want to stay one step ahead of the game? Start enforcing a stronger DMARC policy of quarantine or reject now. It’s worth the time and effort, and not just because it will eventually be required.

The benefits of enforcing a stronger DMARC policy

Some senders hesitate to enforce strict DMARC policies due to fears it may hurt email deliverability. While an incorrectly configured DMARC record or other authentication issues may cause deliverability problems, the truth is that email authentication can lead to better deliverability.

The use of email authentication is a strong signal to mailbox providers that you are a responsible and reliable sender When you’ve got a good email reputation, you are less likely to get blocklisted, less likely to get filtered into the junk folder, and more likely to land in the inbox.

Enforcing a strong DMARC policy is a clear signal that you are working to do the right thing. It protects your reputation as an email sender because it makes it easier for mailbox providers to identify your messages as legitimate and messages from spammers and scammers as malicious.

DMARC benefits for mailbox providers

All major mailbox providers support DMARC. That includes Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Apple Mail, and AOL. And as we see with Gmail and Yahoo, it’s important enough to make it a requirement.

For mailbox providers, DMARC provides information about how to filter messages that fail authentication. This is what your domain’s DMARC policy does. When mailbox providers are unclear about how to handle unauthenticated messages, they may lean toward delivering them. That’s because their users would be more upset about not receiving real emails than dealing with spam. This is one reason why potentially dangerous emails sometimes sneak through.

DMARC benefits for email users

For email recipients, DMARC makes the inbox a safer place because it prevents malicious phishing attempts and brand spoofing emails from getting delivered. Specifically, it stops emails with forged information in the “from” field of an email header.

That means consumers have less to worry about when, for example, they open a transactional email from a brand they do business with regularly. Their inbox can be used for important customer communications. Email is a common and popular way for people to connect with brands. Mailgun’s Email and the customer experience report found that around 3/4ths of consumers prefer email for both transactional and promotional messages.

DMARC benefits for senders and email marketers

For email senders, DMARC helps protect brand reputation and also provides valuable reports on the IP addresses that are sending mail on behalf of your domain. This lets you monitor for email spoofing and find out if legitimate emails are encountering authentication issues that impact deliverability. You can set up DMARC so that you get daily reports from servers receiving any emails claiming to be from you.

But more importantly, stronger email authentication helps maintain the integrity of the email channel because it keeps bad actors out of the inbox. It ensures that email continues to be a reliable and useful way to connect.

Try imagining a world in which you could no longer use emails to reach your subscribers, customers, and prospects. Both email senders and mailbox providers want people to keep using email. That’s why Marcel Becker called them “our mutual customers.” Enforcing a DMARC policy isn’t just a good idea, it should be a responsibility. That’s why mailbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo are likely to make p=reject mandatory in the future.

BIMI: The bonus benefit

Another potential benefit of a strong DMARC policy is eligibility to have a certified logo show up on your marketing and transactional emails. This is made possible through a specification known as Brand Indicators for Message Idenfitication (BIMI).

BIMI adds more branding to the inbox experience and there’s evidence it could help increase engagement metrics such as open rates. It could also serve as a sign that the email can be trusted.

That’s because any email that displays a BIMI logo has also been authenticated using DMARC. However, mailbox providers won’t show a BIMI logo unless you’re a DMARC policy of either p=quarantine or p=reject.

What does a DMARC record look like?

There’s more to a DMARC record than just the policy. Let’s take a closer look at the TXT record you’ll need to publish on your DNS server.

When you set up your DMARC policy and create a DNS record, there are up to 11 tags you may use. Only two of those are required: the v tag (version) and the p tag (policy). But you also want to use the “rua=” tag, because it defines the email addresses where receiving mail servers should send DMARC reports.

Here’s a quick explanation of all DMARC tags:

A DMARC record with only the basics will look something like this:

                            

                                v=DMARC1; p=reject; rua=mailto:dmarc-reports@yourcompany.com
                            
                        

The v and p tags must appear first. All other tags can appear in any order.

A somewhat more complex DMARC record might look like this:

                            

                                v=DMARC1; p=quarantine; sp=quarantine; rua=mailto:dmarc-reports@yourcompany.com;
pct=100; aspf=s; adkim=s
                            
                        

If you’re pursuing BIMI implementation, it’s important to know about the values required for a couple of optional tags. As with your main DMARC policy, subdomain policies cannot be set to none (sp=none). Furthermore, the percentage tag must have a value of 100 (pct=100), which means all emails are subject to your DMARC policy.

How to publish a DMARC record

First, set up SPF and DKIM, if you haven’t done so already. Those should be running for at least 48 hours before you set up DMARC.

Then, go to your DNS hosting provider, and follow these steps:

1. Add your DMARC record to your DNS by creating a new record.
2. Use the TXT record type — this will likely be in a dropdown menu.
3. Enter _DMARC in the Name or Host field.
4. Enter the required tag value pairs (v= and p=) as well as any optional tag values needed.
5. Save, or create, the DMARC record.
6. Validate that the DMARC record has been set up correctly by running a DMARC Record Check.

If you start with a policy value of p=none during initial implementation and testing, you should eventually update it to p=quarantine or p=reject.

Setting up DMARC seems pretty simple on the surface, but it can get very technical. So, you may need to ask your IT department for help. There are also vendors that specialize in DMARC implementation.

For example, Red Sift is a cybersecurity company that offers OnDMARC, which is a service that helps out with many factors of email authentication, including BIMI as well as DKIM and SPF configuration. Other vendors who can help with DMARC include dmarcian and PowerDMARC.

The tools to improve email deliverability in 2024

DMARC is just one of several factors senders are thinking about this year thanks to the changes from Gmail and Yahoo. Research from Sinch Mailgun found the biggest benefits of prioritizing email deliverability are improved customer satisfaction and increased revenue.

If you’re ready to get serious about inbox placement, Mailgun Optimize is a complete deliverability suite. It includes reports that tell you if your authentication protocols are working properly. Plus, you’ll also find out if your emails are likely to land in spam, email validation tools, email previews, blocklist monitoring, and more.

The post What DMARC Policy Should Senders Use in 2025? appeared first on Email on Acid.

Plenty of retailers, and many others who invest in marketing this time of year, have either already launched important email campaigns or they will be hitting send very soon. While you may have been planning your Black Friday marketing strategy since January, there’s still time to make some last-minute adjustments and fine tune your approach.

Whether it’s your overall communication strategy or your sending frequency, new BFCM survey results from Sinch will help you make some smart moves and deliver what consumers want this season.

Insights on Black Friday/Cyber Monday marketing

Sinch surveyed 1,200 people from the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, and Australia to get some details on consumer preferences and expectations around Black Friday promotions and customer communications. These are some of the key findings:

• Most consumers (almost 57%) expect to hear from brands about Black Friday at least one month before a promotion launches.
• More than 61% of consumers chose email as a preferred channel for hearing about Cyber Week promotions. That makes it the most preferred channel.
• Having a multi-channel approach is an effective way to optimize holiday campaigns:
  • 48% of consumers say they’ll go straight to a brand’s website to find promotions.
  • 44% prefer seeing holiday promotions on social media.
  • 45% of consumers choose at least one mobile messaging option (SMS/MMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram) as a preferred channel.
• Nearly 80% of consumers get value from personalized recommendations in holiday promotions. That means going beyond basic first name personalization in your holiday email campaigns.
• Order confirmations, shipping updates, and delivery notifications are vital to the customer experience this time of year. More than 94% of consumers say transactional messages are important during holiday shopping.
• Interactive holiday campaigns could help boost email engagement. More than half of survey respondents said they’d be likely to engage with campaigns featuring interactivity and multimedia.

See more of Sinch’s survey findings and other eye-opening Black Friday statistics in the infographic below:

When Sinch conducted similar research on Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2023, nearly 70% of consumers chose email as a preferred channel. Despite an 8% decline from last year, email is still Numero Uno. But it’s clear that consumers have a variety of ways they want to hear from brands over the holidays. As we explained earlier this year…. email is still relevant… but it’s got some company.

One of email’s newest neighbors is Rich Communication Services (RCS), which became much more widely available after Apple announced support of the messaging protocol in iOS 18. RCS Business Messaging (RBM) is poised to transform the ways brands communicate with their customers on mobile devices. It has the potential for interactive, app-like experiences that at least 51% of the people Sinch surveyed are likely to engage with.

But rather than try and explain an RCS campaign to you, it’s probably easier for you to see how can impact your marketing strategy. Check out this customer story from Sinch about a food brand from France that already took advantage of RCS for holiday marketing.

Your Black Friday email marketing checklist

When it’s peak marketing season and you’re competing against thousands of other companies vying for consumer dollars, sending expertly-crafted emails with irresistible offerings will help you stand out among your competitors and capture your readers’ attention. 

But there’s more to a great Black Friday email strategy than sending out stellar emails. In this checklist, we’ll cover 11 important questions to ask before you launch email campaigns for Black Friday and Cyber Monday:

1. Are you building your list for Black Friday? 
2. Do you have the right sending cadence? 
3. Are you optimizing send times? 
4. Do you need a holiday IP warmup? 
5. Have you checked email list hygiene? 
6. What’s your Black Friday subject line strategy? 
7. What’s your Black Friday CTA strategy? 
8.  Are you taking any big swings this Black Friday? 
9.   What’s the plan for personalization and segmentation? 
10.  Are you split-testing content and design?
11.  How will your Black Friday emails look when delivered? 

1. Are you building your list for Black Friday?

It’s not too late to start adding new subscribers to your email list. The excitement around Black Friday and Cyber Monday can prompt potential customers to signup so they can take advantage of what you’re offering for the holidays. Here are some ideas for growing your list of Black Friday shoppers:

• Use social media to drive signups. When posting on your social media channels, instead of linking to your website homepage, link directly to your email signup form or a landing page specifically geared for capturing subscribers.
  
• Refresh your website opt-in forms. On your website, change up the language and offers used in your opt-in forms. You might reference Black Friday specifically, offer a free download, or entice signups with the promise of special VIP discounts. Use fresh imagery and A/B test offers throughout the weeks leading up to Black Friday.
  
• Make sure website visitors have the option to subscribe from multiple places. Email signup opportunities don’t have to be restricted to pop-ups and landing pages. A few other places you can offer visitors the chance to sign up are:
  • Contact forms
  • Checkout pages
  • Account registration forms
  • Comments sections
  • Blog posts
  • Product pages
  • The footer of your website

Want to learn more about how to build your email list the right way? Check out our article, How to Grow Your Email List Organically for Better Deliverability.

2. Do you have the right sending cadence?

When should you start sending Black Friday emails and how frequently should you send them? Our survey of consumers found there’s quite a spread among people’s opinions about the right time to start talking to them about holiday shopping.

Two weeks before Black Friday might be a good sweet spot. But, if you’ve strategically segmented your list based on email engagement, you could try sending to your most-engaged subscribers even earlier. They’re likely the ones hoping to hear from you sooner rather than later.

Let’s get tactical… Divide your email campaigns into three phases: pre-holiday, during-holiday, and post-holiday. Use a marketing calendar to map out your sending schedules.

How often should you send? When Sinch Mailjet surveyed marketers in 2021, they found that a combined 60% of them planned to send Black Friday emails multiple times a week or even several times a day.

If you’re increasing sending frequency over the holidays, pay attention to your email marketing metrics as the season progresses. When unsubscribes start climbing and open rates start declining, it could be a sign you’ve pushed things a bit too far.

3. Do you need a holiday IP warmup?

If your normal email frequency is more like once a week or once a month, now is a good time to warm up your sending IP before ramping up your email volume for the holiday season. Failing to do so could send the wrong signal, make you look spammy, and cause deliverability issues.

Dramatically increasing your send cadence can make your IP reputation look suspicious when you haven’t warmed it up. There’s no point in spending hours of effort on extensive Black Friday email marketing campaigns if those emails go straight to the junk folder, or – worse yet – are blocked entirely by mailbox providers. 

4. Have you checked email list hygiene?

Warming up your IP isn’t the only pre-holiday checkup you should do. BFCM campaigns are some of the biggest efforts of the year – make sure they make it to the inbox with a solid deliverability strategy. 

While email list hygiene is important all year long, you should pay extra attention to it before starting any big email campaign pushes. In Sinch Mailgun’s State of email deliverability 2025 survey, more than 39% of email senders said they rarely or never practice email list hygiene. If you’re in that 39%, you may want to carve out a few days to dedicate to this task before your pre-holiday campaigns start.  

5. Are you optimizing send times?

In a perfect world, your Black Friday email campaign would hit consumers’ inboxes right before they decide to check their email. That would mean your message is sitting right on top, ready to be opened and clicked.

If you can segment your list by location, you can optimize sends for different time zones. However, different people have different email-checking habits. That’s why machine-learning technology like Send Time Optimization (STO) gives you a real advantage during a time when inboxes are filling up like stuffed stockings over the fireplace.

STO is an automated method of delivering emails based on when subscribers are most likely to engage. Mailgun’s users experienced an average of a 5-10% increase in clicks by using STO. 

STO services are also much less time-intensive than manual scheduling, giving you more time for designing, testing, and optimizing other aspects of your campaigns.

6. What’s your Black Friday subject line strategy?

With all the competition in the inbox, you’ll need to invest more time in copywriting a catchy, attention-grabbing subject line.

You might be inclined to think Black Friday is the time to go over the top in your email campaigns. But if you don’t usually use all caps, emojis, or exclamation marks, now is not the time to start. Not only can they trigger spam filters, it just seems like you’re yelling. 

So how do you get people to open your BFCM emails? 

• Stay on-brand, but get creative within your brand identity. 
• Create a sense of urgency (FOMO). 
• Position your subject line as a question.
• Put the hook or a cliff-hanger in your pre-header.
• Keep your subject short and to the point.
• Lead with an enticing, personalized offer.

You don’t have to stoop to the lows of “one weird trick,” but think about the value you’re offering. Is it a discount? Something exclusive for subscribers? A limited-time offer? 

Put the most important information upfront, and leave a little room for the imagination. Ask questions, start a conversation, and focus on the emotional connection first, rather than a “Me, me, me!” message.

Need some high-quality ideas for subject lines to test? Check out our Best of Black Friday email examples.

7. What’s your Black Friday CTA strategy?

High open rates are great, but you also want your Black Friday weekend email recipients to click through to the product page where they’ll, hopefully, make a purchase. Most of us are used to seeing offers with a “buy now,” “shop now,” “get X now,” “learn more,” or “download your free ebook” call-to-action button – boring.

Try thinking of creative ways to emotionally hook your audience with your call to action while staying true to your brand. Use catchy phrases that might resonate with the culture of your customer base. Don’t be afraid of puns, pop culture references, memes, or industry jargon if you think your subscribers would “get it.” 

The actual words may not even be as important as eye-catching visuals. Using roll-over or hover effects on buttons, animated GIFs, and bold color schemes can also increase engagement.

The effectiveness of your CTAs will largely depend on how relatable and interesting they are to your audience. Keep an eye on what others in your industry are doing with their email CTAs, push your creative boundaries, and if you’re stumped for ideas, we’ve got an article on how to write creative CTAs for Better Email Engagement that will definitely inspire you.  

8. Are you taking any big swings this Black Friday? 

Do you have new products, bigger sales, expanded services, or exciting features you’re launching as part of your Black Friday email strategy? Now might be the time to use some new techniques to add fun and excitement to your email campaigns. 

Experiment with creative elements like countdown clocks, inventory counters, animations, interactive content, or other elements like email gamification. Using these creative treatments can help them stand out from your other email campaigns and grab recipients’ attention. 

9. What’s your plan for segmentation and personalization?

As you put together your offers, think deeply about which subscribers they’ll resonate with, and why they’re receiving each email. Remember, in the days leading up to Black Friday, your subscribers are going to get hundreds of emails from a variety of brands – not just yours.

Before the holiday shopping season begins, think about what defines an active vs. unengaged subscriber. Starting as early as possible – ideally September – reach out to your disengaged subscribers by running a re-engagement campaign. Ask them their preferences for BFCM emails, and develop new segments around their responses and engagement.

Other ways you can segment subscribers include:

• Demographics: Gender, geographic location, family/household
• Behavior: Shopping preferences, average order value, purchase frequency, browsing vs. shopping, current cart profile
• Early birds and procrastinators: Target based purchase patterns from previous years
• Deal seekers: If a discount is what’s going to get them to purchase, look at what offers worked in the past, and segment that group accordingly

Don’t overlook your newest subscribers. They may not know your brand and offerings as well as some of your longtime customers, so consider adding a specific BFCM welcome email series, especially if you’re also running top-of-funnel marketing campaigns.

Once you’ve created your segments, don’t forget to personalize your emails. We’re not just talking about “Hi, <first name>.” There are a variety of ways to personalize your messaging. Here are just a few:  

• Personalized product recommendations. For BFCM, personalized product recommendations are the name of the game. Mailjet’s survey found this was one of the most-used advanced tactics for Black Friday email campaigns.
• Use survey responses to personalize email content and offers. During the holidays, your typical customers may not be purchasing for themselves – it’s a gift-giving season, after all. Send a survey ahead of time to your subscribers to figure out who they’re looking to purchase gifts for, and segment and message accordingly.
• Use dynamic content. Dynamic content in email is an extremely powerful tool to improve engagement and conversions. Dynamic content is any information that displays conditionally based on a set of rules such as subscriber behavior, product availability, or even the weather. Just about anything in your email can be dynamic – subject lines, offers, recommended products, and more.

10. Are you split testing content and designs?

Without testing you won’t really know what offers, designs, and messaging work best to get your subscribers excited to open, click, and make a purchase. You can follow all the “best practices” you want, but every audience is different.

Sinch Mailjet’s Black Friday survey revealed that only 22% of senders split-tested their emails. The most successful email marketers are more likely to be implementing these tactics (32%), but that’s still vastly underusing one of the most helpful techniques for ensuring the success of your Black Friday email strategy.

To improve opens and click-through rates of your holiday email campaigns, try split testing your:

• Subject lines
• Email copy
• Imagery
• Offers
• CTAs
• Overall layout and design

Even if you’re not split-testing every single email for BFCM, make sure you have your A/B testing ready ahead of time. Know what works, and what doesn’t, so you can execute quickly and efficiently come game time.

11. How will your Black Friday emails look when delivered?

No matter how good your offers are or how compellingly you craft your subject lines and CTAs, if your email looks like a mess when recipients open it, they might not click through. 

Inconsistent rendering across email clients, browsers, and device types is a pain point that all email marketers face. It can derail your Black Friday email strategy if you don’t test your emails to ensure they display well no matter what platform they are opened on.

Test your email templates and campaigns ahead of time and ensure that CTAs work, images are optimized, and that your emails are accessible to everyone on your list – even your Outlook subscribers. 

Sinch Email on Acid offers unlimited testing on major clients and devices. That means that email teams can preview campaigns as many times as needed before launching. Find out more about why you should test every email campaign. 

The post Black Friday Email Strategy for 2024: New Consumer Insights appeared first on Email on Acid.

Red and green are absolutely everywhere during the holidays – on signage, in decor, in magazines and catalogs, on websites, and in emails. In fact, you’ve probably used this color combination in your own holiday marketing campaigns. However, according to Healthline, about one out of twelve men and one out of 200 women have red-green color blindness. 

It’s the most common color vision deficiency (CVD) in the world, and it could represent a significant portion of your subscribers. So how exactly does this affect your holiday email campaigns and what can you do to create more accessible holiday emails?

What is red-green color blindness?

People without color blindness are able to see and tell the difference between three colors: red, green, and blue. Nerves in the retinas of our eyes called “cones” perceive the colors, send a message about them to our brains, then convert them into color vision.

People with red-green color blindness are born with either no cones to perceive red or green, or simply a shortage of those cones. All About Vision lists four ways this occurs:

• Red-blind (protanopia) – Red can’t be seen.  
• Green-blind (deuteranopia) – Green can’t be seen.
• Red-weak (protanomaly) – Some red is visible; green and blue are normal. 
• Green-weak (deuteranomaly) – Some green is visible; red and blue are normal. 

So, depending on the type of color vision deficiency a person has, they might see things that are red and green all in a kind of murky green tone. Or they may have trouble differentiating between shades. 

How people with color blindness see the holidays

Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of an email subscriber with color blindness. How would this person experience your holiday email designs? First, here’s how someone with a color vision deficiency might see one of the most popular figures at Christmastime, Santa Claus. Notice how the vibrant colors are muted and there’s no clear distinction between red and green. The jolly old elf looks a little more like the Grinch, doesn’t he?

Now, it’s true that someone who’s dealt with red-green color blindness their entire lives may be accustomed to seeing Santa like this. However, the color choices you choose to use over the holidays and throughout the year could affect the way certain subscribers engage with your emails.

The impact on holiday email designs

Take a look at a couple of holiday email campaigns through the lens of someone who is color blind. Here’s a campaign featuring the famous red cup from Starbucks.

Notice that pretty much everything is red or green. A red, white, and green holiday cup sits on top of a background that fades from green to red. Now check out the filtered version of this email that simulates how someone with protanopia sees the campaign. This holiday email certainly doesn’t have the same impact for someone with red-green color-blindness.

Here’s another holiday email that uses lots of red and green in the design. This time, however, there’s an important element that red-green color blindness could affect – the email’s call-to-action (CTA), which is green and stands in stark contrast to all the red. That’s an effective way to draw attention to the button and increase the click rate, but it won’t have the same impact for subscribers with a color vision deficiency.

The example below shows how someone who struggles to perceive the color green (deuteranopia) sees this email campaign. That CTA button doesn’t have quite the same pop, does it? There’s really no contrast at all. Of course, this isn’t the end of the world. But when every click counts, it’s worth considering how color choices and accessibility go hand-in-hand with email engagement.

We’re not trying to say you should never use red and green in holiday email campaigns. However, it’s wise to avoid using those colors for important elements or to convey essential information. That’s solid advice for the entire year – not just the holidays.

Using certain combinations for your email campaign’s text and HTML background colors, for example, could render the message unreadable for certain people. A good email accessibility best practice is to avoid using color to convey meaning.

Tips and alternatives for accessible holiday emails

Inclusive email marketing means keeping subscribers of all types in mind as you design and develop templates and campaigns. So, it’s worth considering ways to create holiday email campaigns without focusing too much on red and green.

Here are a few brands that found other ways to deliver emails that are merry and bright.

1. Rely on holiday-themed copy and icons

Instead of sharing holiday cheer through color, consider using things like symbols. Think wreaths, candy canes, snowflakes, gifts, and stockings. Apple did this in a really unique way in one of their email campaigns:

Though they stuck to their typical brand colors, they turned their products into wreaths and snowflakes, highlighting the holidays in a fun way.

Bicycle accessory brand Rapha didn’t even get close to traditional holiday colors in this email. Yet, it still captures the spirit of the season because the copy makes it clear what their gift guide is all about.

The brand uses phrases like “bike bells ringing” and “all the trimmings” to get in the festive spirit without typical red and green color schemes.

2. Consider other holiday color combinations

There are other colors that can communicate that Christmassy feeling.

You might use blue and white to depict a snowy scene, silver and gold for a classy Christmas, or black and white in Black Friday emails. Not only will this make things easier for your entire audience to consume your emails, it can also help you stand out from the hundreds of red and green emails they’ll get this season.

BarkBox embraced this concept in their holiday email:

They went with a blue color scheme, adding white snowflakes and music notes to make it seem wintery. It still feels festive but works for everyone on their list.

3. Use patterns or textures

Patterns and textures are another great way to add holiday flair without using red or green. Create your own, branded pattern or find a great texture from a stock library. BathLife used a classy gold pattern as the background of their holiday email:

This design choice is sort of like creating your own gift wrap for an email. Find out how to code background images in email so you can pull of a look like this.

4. Use more than color to distinguish links and CTAs

The goal of most holiday email promotions is to convince your contacts to click links and CTAs that send them to a landing page on your site.

While it may be tempting to make your links red or green this holiday season, make sure you’re distinguishing them in other ways, too. Consider adding an underline, an arrow, or another symbol to make links stand out.

To someone dealing with color-blindness, your green or red buttons may look the same as the rest of your email. But you want them to stand out. So think of other ways to highlight them:

• Make them big
• Add an icon
• Include a border
• Switch up or emphasize the font
• Place them in their own area of the email

And of course, writing creative email CTAs can do a lot to boost your clicks. Instead of “Buy Now” or “Read More”, write CTA copy that gets a laugh, makes a promise, or stirs up curiosity in your subscribers.

How to see what color blind subscribers see

The best way to know that your emails look good for every single one of your subscribers is through pre-deployment testing. That’s where Sinch Email on Acid shines. The accessibility features in our email readiness tool check your email for color contrast, code for screen readers, title attributes, alt text, and other accessibility factors. You can even preview the email with filters that display different color deficiencies.

Enjoy unlimited testing with every one of our plans. That means you can preview campaigns on more than 100 clients and live devices, and you can do it as many times as you need before hitting send. That’s not a holiday promo, my friend. It’s just how we do things around here.

The post How People with Color Blindness See Your Holiday Email Campaigns appeared first on Email on Acid.

Not only does an inaccessible email marginalize some of your contacts and customers, but it’s also going to have a negative impact on email performance, brand reputation, and the overall business.

The reason is simple: If people have trouble viewing, reading, clicking on, or understanding your email campaigns, they won’t take the actions you expect.

Of course, the real reason to focus on accessibility in email marketing is because it’s the right thing to do. So, let’s explore this important topic more. Our complete guide will cover email accessibility best practices and how to design and develop campaigns for every subscriber on your list.

What is email accessibility?

Accessibility is the practice of making things meaningful and easy to use for people of all physical and cognitive abilities. The goal is to let as many people as possible access a resource. That could include a building, a restroom, an event or activity, a website, an application, or an email.

Email accessibility is the practice of writing, designing, and coding HTML emails that people can easily understand and engage with regardless of their physical or mental constraints. That includes optimizing emails for people who use assistive technology to access the internet and their email inboxes.

Improving email accessibility is a big commitment. It takes time and effort. But if you want an effective and inclusive email marketing program, it’s worth it.

Are email marketers focused on accessibility?

For the past few years, the Email Markup Consortium (EMC) has conducted research on email accessibility. Since 2021, the EMC analyzed hundreds of thousands of email campaigns to get an idea of whether brands and marketers are working to make emails accessible.

To put it bluntly, we’re doing a pretty horrible job. More than 99% of the emails analyzed contained accessibility issues considered “Serious” or “Critical,” and that stat has not changed much since the EMC began its annual research.

I spoke with two of the EMC’s administrators about the 2024 findings during an on-demand session of Email Camp MessageMania. Check out my Q&A with Alice Li and Naomi West below.

The point of conducting this research is not to shame email marketers for dropping the ball on accessibility. The idea is to raise awareness about the importance of taking the time to make emails more accessible. Naomi West called it a “glaring issue” and a sign that something was “gravely wrong in the industry.” She feels accessibility is a human right. However, Naomi also admits there was a time when she simply didn’t realize what needed to be done.

When I started learning about email accessibility I was just like ‘Oh my goodness.’ There are all these things I had no awareness that I was doing wrong or could easily course correct.

Naomi West EMC Administrator

There are a bunch of things you can do to improve email accessibility starting today, and many of them are quite simple. We’ll tell you more and show you how to do it throughout this article. But if you want to get right to the good stuff, check out my article on how to code accessible emails.

Why is accessibility in email marketing important?

To paint a picture that illustrates the importance of email accessibility, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of someone with a disability…

Imagine you get an email from one of your favorite ecommerce brands. You’re excited about the offer mentioned in the subject line, but your excitement fades when you open the campaign.

Color contrast issues and a tiny font make it unreadable. You’re not sure where to find the promo code or where you should click. Tap targets on CTAs are too small on your mobile device. You try using software that reads the email to you, and it sounds like nothing but a confusing mess of garbled words and numbers.

That’s the kind of experience a subscriber with a vision impairment or other disabilities could have when senders fail to consider email accessibility. However, people with disabilities are far from the only ones who benefit from a focus on email accessibility. Making it easier to read, click, and comprehend email campaigns improves the experience for everyone on your list. As an added bonus, it also supports better email engagement and overall campaign performance.

While there are plenty of people who deal with a disability, it’s a mistake to think of email accessibility as something you do for a small subset of subscribers. At any given time, an injury, surgery, or temporary situation could mean someone is counting on your email to be accessible. As Alice Li pointed out during our Email Camp panel discussion, accessible digital communication will become even more important as Gen X, Millennials, and even Gen Z get older and start having issues with vision, dexterity, and more.

We are all only temporarily ‘abled’. We need to consider, as our digitally native generations age, how we can all continue to access web-based information like email.

Alice Li EMC Administrator

Accessible emails not only ensure your marketing messages are easy to engage with, but they also support crucial customer communications delivered to the email inbox. That could include anything from transactional emails to messages delivering important health and safety information. Think of how brands relied on email during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example.

Failure to deliver accessible emails may even get you in legal trouble…

Accessibility regulations and standards for email

The most well-known and comprehensive law connected to accessibility in the U.S. is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This legislation protects the rights of individuals with disabilities, and it has been the basis for many lawsuits in which businesses are sued for failing to provide accessible experiences.

So, do any of the regulations in the ADA apply to email marketing? The ADA became law back in 1990. At the time, the internet, email, and digital media weren’t at the forefront of lawmakers’ minds. There are no specific guidelines for accessible websites, emails, or applications.

However, the Bureau of Internet Accessibility explains that Title III of the ADA “prohibits businesses from discriminating on the basis of disability in places of public accommodation.” Technically speaking, a website, app, or email could also be interpreted as a “place of public accommodation.”

What’s more? Transactional emails such as order confirmations, shipping updates, and password resets, should be always accessible because they’re more than marketing. Those communications often contain very important information that all your subscribers need to easily access.

Various industries have their own regulations and requirements around accessibility. Check out our article on email accessibility regulations by industry to find out more.

While the ADA has no direct technical guidance on digital accessibility, the group responsible for providing global guidelines in this area is the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), which publishes the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Currently, brands should be trying to follow WCAG 2.2. Updated guidelines are on the way, but WCAG 3 is not expected to be released for a few years.

Statistics on disabilities and accessibility

While it’s not hard to see why email accessibility matters, it helps to have some facts and hard numbers that drive the point home. Consider these accessibility statistics…

Over one billion people are estimated to live with some sort of disability. That’s approximately 15% of the world’s population. To break that down a little further:

• At least 2.2 billion people worldwide have some level of vision impairment. About 217 million of those individuals have moderate to severe vision difficulties.
• Hearing impairment is the third most reported chronic problem among the aged population, but 65% of people with hearing loss are younger than retirement age.
• Globally, 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women experience some level of color blindness.
• Around 5-10% of the global population is dyslexic.

So, if your emails aren’t accessible, you may be delivering a poor experience for a significant portion of your subscriber list.

Email accessibility studies

When we surveyed marketers for the “Accessibility in the Inbox” report, more than half of those questioned said they do consider accessibility factors during email production. But further questioning revealed that many weren’t doing nearly enough to truly support email accessibility.

For example, more than 50% of those surveyed said they were doing things like writing short, descriptive subject lines and keeping paragraphs short for readability. However, just 14% said they were using accessibility testing tools, and less than 25% said they were writing alt text for images.

You can also dive into the Email Markup Consortium’s latest research. The 2024 accessibility report provides insights into the most common missteps among email marketing teams while offering some actionable advice on how to fix those problems and make improvements.

Another helpful study comes from ActionRocket and Beyond the Envelope. In 2021, they teamed up to survey everyday people about important accessibility factors. That included asking participants about the types of text, color contrast, links, and layouts they found easiest to interact with or consume. Get the results in the Email for All report.

How email accessibility supports marketing efforts

Ignoring the need for accessible emails is certainly inconsiderate for subscribers with disabilities. But it also means missed opportunities and potential pitfalls for your marketing efforts. Here are six reasons why improving email accessibility supports a brand’s marketing strategy:

1. Accessible design improves usability for everyone on your list

Because human-centered design is at the core of accessibility, the changes you make — from color contrast to font sizes — will benefit every person on your list. They’ll all enjoy a fuller, richer inbox experience, which ultimately increases your return on investing in email accessibility.

2. Email accessibility helps you reach more people

With accessible emails, you can reach everyone on your list, including those with permanent disabilities or temporary impairments. If your emails aren’t accessible, you’re automatically excluding a subset of your audience and reducing your reach.

3. Accessible emails improve engagement and retention

If subscribers can’t read your email content or interact with your calls to action (CTAs), then they literally can’t engage with your emails. They also won’t be likely to stick around for future emails, either. That can negatively impact your email program performance while increasing your unsubscribe rate.

Find out more about how accessibility and email engagement are connected.

4. Following accessibility best practices minimizes legal risk

The number of website accessibility lawsuits filed in 2022 increased by 12% from the previous year.  And there were likely many more unreported state lawsuits and demand letters with out-of-court settlements. Litigation is a serious threat to any company not meeting the needs of its entire audience.

But shockwaves from a lawsuit reach far beyond the economic damage. Even if it doesn’t have merit, when customers hear about these cases, their opinion of your brand is diminished.

5. Accessible email design separates you from competitors

If someone gets two emails from competing brands – one they can read and interact with and the other that isn’t accessible – which email do you think they’ll click on? Who do you think will win their business?

Even if they’ve been purchasing from your competitor for quite some time, if your accessible emails are easier to engage with and understand, they’re more likely to make a switch.

6. Accessibility enhances your brand

Knowing your audience is at the heart of every good marketing strategy. By making your emails accessible to everyone, you’re speaking directly to their needs and showing that you understand their everyday lives.

Thinking about subscribers as people rather than just contacts in a database shows that you care about them and put their needs first. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) cites a study that found 92% of consumers want brands to practice empathy. That means creating accessible emails that show you understand how people with both temporary and permanent impairments engage with your brand.

Find out more about how to add a human touch to email marketing.

Types of disabilities email marketers must consider

When you focus on accessibility, you’re accommodating a variety of disabilities and impairments. Here’s a list of disability types, along with a few ways you can support subscribers with these challenges when building your emails:

Vision impairments

Vision disabilities go far beyond blindness or low vision. They also include color blindness and those who have sensitivities to brightness, cataracts, glaucoma, and diabetic retinopathy.  Vision impairments are the most likely way a subscriber would have trouble accessing an HTML email. For example, astigmatism is a condition that can make it hard to read emails in dark mode.

There are many ways you can improve the email experience for people with impaired vision. That includes providing appropriate color contrast in your emails, using a readable font/font size, and coding emails so they are compatible with screen reading software.

Auditory impairments

Auditory disabilities include those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Someone with an auditory disability might have trouble with the volume of sound, frequency of sound, or phantom noises (called tinnitus).

In your emails, consider things like video captions and podcast transcripts.

Cognitive issues

People with mental limitations that affect memory, problem-solving, attention, or comprehension. For example, dyslexia is a common cognitive issue that can impact the ability to engage with an email.

When building emails, use a simple layout and presentation, avoid technical language, include clear instructions when necessary, and steer clear of distracting animation.

Neurological conditions

People with conditions that affect the central and peripheral nervous system — brain, spinal cord, cranial nerves, etc. This includes things like strokes, epilepsy, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and brain tumors. ADD and ADHD are also neurological disorders that may impact how subscribers engage with email campaigns.

Make sure your email is easy to navigate, break up text into smaller sections, and avoid precise actions that would be difficult for someone with tremors or who is using a mouth stick.

Physical limitations

Physical disabilities include those who have weaknesses or limitations of motor control. It may also involve problems like tremors, lack of coordination, paralysis, joint disorders such as arthritis, and missing limbs.

Ensure that your email can be easily accessed with keyboard navigation and screen readers.

Speech impairments

This includes people who are unable to produce speech that is recognizable by others or by software. Muteness and stuttering are just two examples here. Include options in your email to get in touch beyond a phone call, like a contact form, live chat box, or a reply-to email address.

In fact, accessibility is another reason to stop using a no-reply from address in your campaigns.

Temporary impairments and environmental considerations

This includes a wide range of factors that temporarily make it difficult for people to consume your emails: broken arms, missing glasses, slow internet speeds, using a mobile phone in the sun, watching video without sound in a public space, or even using Alexa or Siri.

Remember, the same people that easily consume your content now might have eye surgery or carpal tunnel in a few weeks.

Writing accessible email copy

Accessible email copywriting helps people who may have cognitive, neurological, or visual impairments. But writing content with accessibility in mind makes email copy easier for all your subscribers to read and understand.

Avoid writing too many long, complex sentences. That goes for paragraphs too. Big blocks of text are harder to read. Using active voice and clear language that’s free of jargon is also more accessible, and it’s a best practice for writing overall. While it depends on your target audience, an 8th-grade reading level is considered accessible for 85% of the general public.

It’s also helpful to use things like headings and subheadings as well as bullet points. This helps organize content in a logical and meaningful way. That makes email copywriting easier for both people and assistive technology to navigate.

Alt text (or alternative text) is intended to describe images and graphics online. Every important image in an email campaign should have alt text. It may be a good idea to have copywriters or email marketing specialists compose alt text rather than leaving it up to developers to decide what it should be.

Here are some quick tips for writing alt text:

• Use different alt text for each image, even if the images are similar. Imagine how confusing it would be to someone using a screen reader if all the pictures were described the same way.
• Don’t add image title text in addition to alt text. Most screen readers will read both the title text and alt text, which doesn’t provide an ideal listening experience.
• Use empty alt text when appropriate. If your image strictly serves a design purpose (like a swirl, pattern, or shadow) then alt text may not be necessary.

Designing accessible email campaigns

There’s a lot to consider when you’re designing an email with accessibility in mind. One of the most crucial email accessibility best practices involves something you shouldn’t do.

Any important information in an email should be presented as live text – not as part of the graphic alone. That includes things like promo codes, dates and times, or calls-to-action such as the copy on buttons. Of course, there are still ways to get the look you want using live text, but you may need to get a developer to code it.

Using alt descriptions for images in emails is also beneficial because the alternative text will display when a subscriber has image downloading turned off. Don’t forget, Outlook often blocks images by default.

Other design choices related to text also support email accessibility:

• Choose a readable font
  • San serif is usually preferred for the body copy, but high-resolution displays make a readable serif typeface less of a problem.
• Use a large enough font size
  • A minimum of 16 px is recommended
• Make blocks of text left-aligned
  • Centered paragraphs can be harder to read
• Adjust line spacing and kerning
  • Letters and lines that are too close together can impede readability
• Avoid using color to convey meaning
  • It could be confusing for people with color blindness
  • Screen readers don’t interpret colors
• Use good color contrast between your text and background
  • Normal text should have a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 against the background

Appropriate color contrast in email design is a must for accessibility. That’s why Sinch Email on Acid has accessibility features that evaluate contrast in campaign design. A contrast ratio of 21:1 is black text on a white background, which is the best you can get. A contrast ratio of 1:1 would be like white text on a white background (obviously, that text would disappear).

Speaking of white – using a good amount of white space also supports accessible email design. Email campaigns with a busy design can be distracting and confusing to subscribers with ADD/ADHD. Overusing animations can also be distracting. If they are too intense or flashy (like a strobe effect), it can be a problem for people who suffer from seizures or conditions like epilepsy.

Yet another consideration for accessible design is dark mode emails. When rendering in dark mode, email clients invert colors in different ways, and that could cause accessibility issues. Find out what we learned in our exploration of dark mode and email accessibility.

Coding accessible emails

While your subscribers won’t see the code, there are many things email developers can do to improve accessibility. The truth is – some of the practices we mentioned for accessible design rely on accessible coding. For example, developers may need to include inline CSS styling that ensures there’s a minimum 16 px font size.

Note: Using em units to code font size is preferred because it’s more flexible than using px. Pixels are static while em is relative. Here’s a px to em converter that can help.

A good place to start with accessible email development is making sure you include alt text for images and that you code bulletproof buttons with live text. Both of those steps will improve the email experience for people using screen readers. However, there’s much more you can do to code accessible emails.

Semantic HTML adds meaning to your email code. That’s because semantic markup accurately and intuitively describes the element you’re coding. That helps assistive technology make sense out of everything. For example, using either <em> or <i> will italicize text. But <em> would tell a screen reader to emphasize a certain word while <i> would work better for italicizing a title.

For the same reason, paragraph tags <p> are preferred for email accessibility over line breaks <br>, because a paragraph stands for something while line breaks may only be used for spacing.

The use of h-tags (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.) for headings and subsections is also good for email accessibility. That’s because, unlike simply using a larger font size, h-tags organize the content in a logical way. They also help subscribers using assistive technology skip between sections using keyboard navigation. Every email should have an <h1> and only one. Then you should follow a logical order with sub-headings.

ARIA, which stands for Accessible Rich Internet Applications, is a set of attributes that help make content more accessible. While ARIA isn’t fully supported among email clients, there are some valuable uses for it.

An important ARIA label for email accessibility is the attribute role="presentation". When email developers set tables to role="presentation", it tells the assistive technology (screen reader) that the table is being used for layout purposes instead of for presenting data.

It makes a big difference. Listen to this video to hear the way a screen reader interprets a table with and without role="presentation".

Another ARIA attribute that proves useful to email developers is aria-hidden= "true". This can be added to hide certain elements of an email from screen readers. That could include decorative graphics and duplicative content that you want the software to skip.

For more tips and examples, check out our article on how to code accessible emails.

Screen readers and email accessibility

We’ve brought up screen reading software several times in this article. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, screen readers are assistive technology that primarily helps people with vision problems, but people with cognitive or mobility challenges may use them too.

Screen readers convert digital content into either spoken word audio or Braille. People use keyboard navigation with desktop screen readers, jumping between elements such as headings. Mobile screen readers allow for swiping and touch navigation.

Here’s a list of some of popular screen readers:

• NVDA: The NVDA (Nonvisual Desktop Access) screen reader is free to download. According to a WebAIM survey, it is also one of the most used.
• JAWS: Another popular option is JAWS (Job Access With Speech), which is a screen reader from Freedom Scientific. It can also provide Braille output.
• VoiceOver: (from Apple): For subscribers using a Mac or iPhone, this proprietary screen reader will likely be their choice. It’s built into devices running on iOS. Find out more about using VoiceOver to evaluate accessibility.
• Talkback: (for Android): This screen reader from Google is part of its larger Android Accessibility Suite. It has more than 2.7 million downloads.
• Narrator: This is the default screen reader in Windows. Assistiv Labs (the software’s developer) claims its usage is growing. There’s been a 150% increase since 2017.

Since Android, Apple, and Microsoft offer screen reading options, you can easily test how your emails are read aloud by these software solutions. In addition, more people are beginning to use digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant to access their inboxes. Optimizing for screen readers helps improve the experience when artificial intelligence (AI) reads email too.

Check out the following video to learn more about how screen readers work with email:

It’s important to note that screen readers present content to users one item at a time, which is completely different from the way we visually consume emails. While sighted subscribers can get the gist of email content and design all at once, those with screen readers progress through the email in steps.

They can, however, navigate more quickly through digital content using headings, page sections, paragraphs, and “skip navigation” links. These key differences are why it’s so important that your email structure and content are designed specifically with screen readers in mind. 

Smart home devices and digital assistants

The rise of smart home devices and digital assistants such as Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Siri mean more people are using assistive technology to access the contents of their email inboxes. When emails are coded to be accessible, it’s easier for this technology to present information to users in a clear and efficient way.

With voice-activated devices like Google Home, Amazon Echo, and even Siri becoming more popular You’re going to a growing population who are reading their emails with screen readers or screen reader adjacent devices. So, making emails accessible will make it naturally easier for anyone to read your emails.

Alice Li EMC Administrator

You can also expect that emerging tools built with generative AI, such as ChatGPT, will work best when emails are optimized for screen reader technology.

14 email accessibility best practices

We’ve covered a lot in our guide so far. Now, let’s go over some of the key takeaways in a list of email accessibility best practices.

1. Write email subject lines, sentences, and paragraphs that are clear and concise.
2. Avoid complex language and confusing industry jargon.
3. Use headings, subheadings, and bullet lists for better content organization and navigation.
4. Compose and add alt text for every important image in an email campaign.
5. Choose readable typefaces and an appropriate font size.
6. Never place important information inside of a graphic (always use live text).
7. Use good color contrast, especially between the text and background (minimum 4.5:1).
8. Avoid using color in email design to convey meaning.
9. Stay away from excessive and/or distracting animations.
10. Include enough white space for accessibility (including padding and margin) to support readability and comprehension.
11. Code bulletproof buttons for CTAs that use live text.
12. Implement semantic HTML so that your email code has meaning.
13. Use h-tags for subheadings in email content.
14. Add the ARIA label role=”presentation” to tables used for email layout.

If you accomplish all these email accessibility best practices, you’ll be delivering campaigns that people of all abilities can engage with and enjoy.

Accessibility testing tools for email marketing

There’s one more email accessibility best practice we should mention – accessibility testing. The “Accessibility in the Inbox” report found that nearly 40% of marketers weren’t using any accessibility testing tools before launching an email campaign.

Following best practices is great, but the only way to be 100% certain that you’ve built an accessible email is to test it. That’s why Email on Acid includes accessibility checks in our email testing platform.

Our accessibility testing tool allows you to:

• Preview email designs with filters representing different color deficiencies
• See how alt text displays with images turned off
• Adjust and optimize text-to-background color contrast ratio
• Enhance the accessibility of hyperlinks in your email
• See how using the zoom function impacts the experience
• Set the email title, language, and content-type for screen readers
• And more…
• Start Your Free Trial Today

There are also some free online resources that can help you design accessible emails. They include a color contrast checker from WebAIM. The website accessible-email.org provides free reports and helps you adjust your code. If you use Parcel.io for email editing, they recently made their Accessibility Checker free for everyone. Plus, Microsoft made its testing tool, Accessibility Insights, open source and free as well.

It’s not as important which accessibility testing tools you use as long as you integrate accessibility testing into your normal processes. Find out about even more accessibility testing tools in Sinch Mailjet’s comprehensive comparison article.

Beyond tools, consider talking to real people with disabilities and having them provide feedback on how they experience your emails. User testing always provides amazing insights on how to improve emails.

Learn more about email accessibility

Email on Acid takes accessibility seriously, and it’s also a topic I’m personally very passionate about. I had the opportunity to deliver a presentation on email accessibility at UNSPAM in 2022. Check out the video below:

You can also listen to email marketing podcasts that cover accessibility. Recently, I joined Janice Dombrowski on the podcast Marketing Magnified from Streamline to offer some email accessibility advice for developers. The hosts of Email Einstein interviewed me on the topic as well.

My friend and fellow email geek, Najee Bartley, joined me on an episode of Notes from the Dev: Video Edition to offer her insights on email accessibility, including an eye-opening example of what happens when screen readers encounter an inaccessible email.

Here are even more accessibility resources to explore:

• The EMC’s 2024 Accessibility Report: See what happens when you review thousands of HTML emails and learn about some of the most common and critical email accessibility issues.
• Emails for All – Parcel Unpacked: Check out this recording of a great presentation from email developer and accessibility advocate, Najee Bartley.
• The A11Y Project: A community-driven effort to simplify accessibility with lots of great information about the fundamentals.
• W3C’s accessibility overview: A helpful resource including accessibility guidelines for digital content.
• WebAIM’s accessibility training: Virtual and in-person training opportunities around online accessibility.
• Deque’s Empathy Lab: Learn in a hands-on, interactive way and speak directly with those who have disabilities.
• Cards for Humanity: A fun, interactive tool that helps you consider the situations your subscribers may find themselves in and how you can show empathy.

Finally, if you’re committed to email accessibility, and you want to make your existing templates and automations more accessible, check out our article on how to conduct an email accessibility audit and then build those changes into your processes. For more on that, you’ll want to read our tips on creating an accessible email design system.

The post Email Accessibility in 2024: A Complete Guide for More Inclusive and Effective Campaigns appeared first on Email on Acid.

Of course, it never hurts to double-check your Black Friday email marketing strategy. If you believe in Murphy’s Law, you know that anything that can go wrong, certainly could go wrong (and probably will).

If you’re “the worrying kind” of email marketer, we’ve got a few potential problems you may not have on your list yet.  And if you’ve got more of a “let the chips fall where they may” kind of an attitude, here’s why you should be more concerned with your Black Friday email performance.

Why Black Friday email marketing matters

We probably shouldn’t have to tell you why Black Friday and Cyber Week are such a big deal. (Oh! See what we did there?) But these astronomical numbers are kind of a tradition. And after all, the holidays are all about traditions. So, here goes…

The biggest reason why Black Friday emails matter is because there is a lot of money on the table in terms of consumer spending. According to Adobe Analytics, U.S. shoppers are expected to drop $240.8 billion during the 2024 holiday shopping season. That’s an 8.4% year-over-year increase from 2023.

A sizable chunk of that holiday consumer spending happens during Cyber Week with noticeable spikes on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Interestingly, Cyber Monday typically outpaces Black Friday, but the day after Thanksgiving is when things really start cooking.

The reason Black Friday email marketing matters so much in all of this is because email is the most preferred channel for receiving promotional communications from brands.

We’ve got plenty of original research to back this up. Let’s take a look at what the surveys say…

Consumer preferences for brand communications

According to Sinch Mailgun’s report, Email and the customer experience, 75% of consumers in the U.S. UK, France, Germany, and Spain chose email as a preferred channel for promotional messages.

Almost as many of those survey respondents (74%) chose email as a preferred channel for transactional messages. And transactional emails are unsung heroes of Cyber Week. They keep your customers informed about their purchases and shipments during the hectic holiday season.

You may notice that text messaging was the second most popular option among these consumers. A new study from Sinch, The art and heart of meaningful customer connections, found different yet somewhat similar results.

Rather than selecting all channels they preferred, Sinch’s survey asked U.S. consumers to pick just one preferred channel for brand communications. In this case, 40% of people picked email while text messages came in second at around 22%.

So as an email marketer, this should be reassuring. Your holiday email campaigns are going to drive tons of BFCM results and revenue. When the company breaks things down after everyone gets back from break, you’ll be the hailed as a hero,  right?

But wait… it’s not that easy compadres… and you know it. The challenge email marketers face is getting good engagement in those increasingly crowded inboxes.

Sinch Mailjet’s report, The path to email engagement 2024, found that 49% of consumers only open a few emails from brands on a typical day and 8% don’t open any at all.

Let’s be honest, Black Friday and Cyber Monday aren’t exactly “typical days.” Consumers may be more likely to engage with promotional emails on these days. However, it’s also true that there will be more emails in their inboxes during Cyber Week and beyond.

To get the most out of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday email campaigns, you need to be on top of your game. You don’t want silly mistakes tripping you up.

12 Black Friday email mistakes marketers must avoid

While there are plenty of ways to make Black Friday mistakes with email marketing, we’re going to focus on a dozen different issues that could be disastrous. Before you hit send on your Black Friday campaigns, make sure you’ve addressed these possible problems.

1. Unresponsive Black Friday emails

Once upon a time, there was a difference between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, people poured into shopping malls and big box stores, trampling each other for deals. On Monday, people slacked off at work while taking advantage of online promotions. Now, we’ve mixed it all together into an entire week of consumerism.

Today, not only does even more shopping happen online, it happens on mobile phones. More than half of online holiday spending is attributed to mobile. Adobe Analytics forecasts $128.1 billion of that $240.8 billion will be mobile spend.

You know where this is going. If you expect good Black Friday email performance, those campaigns better be responsive and mobile-friendly. Sinch Mailjet’s email engagement report found more than 70% of consumers primarily use a mobile device to check email.

Unfortunately, coding responsive emails is still a top challenge for many email teams. In fact, Sinch Mailjet’s Inbox Insights report found it is the top design and development challenge.

A smart move is to take a mobile-first approach to email design and development. That means thinking about how your campaigns look and function on smartphones and then adjusting those layouts for desktop. The best way to do this with email code is to use min-width media queries to adjust for screen size rather than max-width (IYKYK).

2. Generic Black Friday email subject lines

Everyone is going to write Black Friday email subject lines with urgency. And they’ll all be talking about sales, discounts, BOGO offers, and limited supplies. If your Black Friday email subject lines sound the same as every other special offer out there, your campaigns will be easily ignored.

So, you’ve got to get creative. Maybe that means personalizing subject lines, using emojis, or taking advantage of preheader text. But “Our Black Friday Sale Starts Now” may not do the trick.

According to Sinch Mailjet’s consumer research, people say the brand or sender name is the most important factor when deciding whether to open an email. However, nearly 80% of those surveyed also indicated the promise of a discount in the subject line was at least somewhat important.

If you can work details of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer into a concise, clear, and compelling subject line, that might be the best way to cut through the noise.

Need some ideas? Here are several Black Friday email subject lines we like:

• Crate & Barrel: Leftover turkey can wait. Black Friday can’t.
• Groupon: The Black Friday VIP List 👀 Use code BLACK30
• Gap: TGI-Black Friday — 50% OFF EVERYTHING. ALL. WEEK.
• Victoria’s Secret: Black Fri-YAY 🙌 Buy One, Get One 50% OFF
• IKEA: [Firstname], escape the Black Friday chaos
• Timberland: 👇Better Than Their Deals☝️ Up To 40% Off

While you’re working on those creative Black Friday email subject lines, don’t forget about writing creative calls-to-action (CTAs) too. The design and copy of those CTA buttons needs to encourage your customers to click and tap their way to your website for some shopping.

3. Dark mode color inversion

A lot of Black Friday email templates contain… well, the color black. A little on the nose, sure. But according to color psychology, black is also a good way to convey luxury and exclusivity.

If you’re familiar with dark mode email development challenges, you already know that some email clients will automatically invert the colors you’re using in your HTML email background. That means it is possible that a dark background could be inverted into a light background when a recipient has dark mode turned on.

That’s not the effect you wanted, and it’s not what subscribers using dark mode want to receive either.

Now, most email clients will recognize that you’re already using a dark theme. However, Outlook 365 may not, and Gmail may mess with some of your colors too.

One way to handle this problem is to make use of the media query prefers-color-scheme: dark. This detects if the email recipient has dark mode turned on, and lets you tailor your CSS styles for dark mode.

However, be aware that Gmail does not support prefers-color-scheme. For some expert advice on how to handle dark mode and Gmail, check out these tips from Rémi Parmentier.

4. Inaccessible holiday email designs

We are big proponents of email accessibility around here. People with disabilities may be even more likely to do their holiday shopping online. So, it’s the responsibility of email marketers to ensure that the inbox experience is inclusive to all.

That includes coding accessible emails for those using screen readers. But another important consideration is color blindness.

Red-green color blindness is the most common. It impacts 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women. And what are two of the most popular colors to use during the holidays? Yep – red and green.

Black Friday email campaigns don’t have to be holiday-themed, but many are. While you don’t need to eliminate red and green in your email designs, try to avoid using those colors to convey meaning or in a way where important information gets lost. Get more tips on designing accessible holiday emails for people with color blindness.

5. Image-only Black Friday emails

Another accessibility issue with Black Friday marketing campaigns is an abundance of image-only emails. It’s a bit shocking to see how many big brands are sending promotional emails that are one giant graphic with no live text.

Screen readers can interpret the alt text of an image. But it’s highly unlikely you’ll be communicating an entire email campaign in image alt text (not to mention it’s a bad idea).

According to acccesiBe, more than 7 million Americans use screen readers. That’s around 2% of the population, which may not sound like a lot, but it could represent a sizable chunk of your list that can’t engage with image-only emails.

Besides accessibility, some subscribers may have image downloading turned off. That happens by default in Outlook inboxes. If your entire message is in the image, campaign performance could be disastrously disappointing.

6. Blasting instead of segmenting

A Black Friday email blast to every subscriber on your list might make sense in some situations. However, in most cases, you’ll be able to deliver more relevant holiday shopping promotions with segmentation.

Take advantage of the zero- and first-party data you’ve collected through your website and online forms to understand what kinds of Black Friday email promotions and products different segments will find engaging. Don’t forget that lots of people are shopping for others rather than themselves.

Can you segment for parents and grandparents buying gifts for kids? How about spouses trying to find the perfect presents for their significant other? Past purchase behaviors can also inform what subscribers are interested in buying this time of year.

Even geographic locations can help you decide what to promote in Black Friday emails. For example, subscribers in Florida and Arizona may not be as interested in warm and cozy winter sweaters compared to the Minnesotans on your list.

7. Black Friday email and landing page mismatches

What happens after online shoppers click on a Black Friday email CTA? Sure, you did your job as an email marketer. But if the website experience doesn’t jive with the email campaign, your results in terms of online sales may suffer.

Emails and landing pages need to work together to effectively earn conversions. Now’s the time to make sure the assets you’re using in Black Friday emails match what subscribers see when they land on your ecommerce site to shop. Here are a few quick tips:

• Use similar or complementary graphics, imagery, and messaging.
• Reiterate the coupon code or offer from the email on the landing page.
• Make sure your landing pages are mobile-friendly and accessible too.
• Continue the personalized experience from the inbox on the website.

If your email and web teams work separately, this is a good time to break down those silos and start collaborating on Black Friday digital marketing strategy together.

Most importantly, make sure your emails do not send subscribers to the wrong landing page – or worse yet – a 404 page.

8. Inaccurate Black Friday email metrics

When the insanity of Black Friday subsides, the next item on the agenda will be evaluating how your campaigns performed. You’ll want to attribute as much as you can to the email channel. But marketing metrics can get messy if you’re unprepared.

One important way to track email marketing performance is with UTM parameters on links in your campaigns. Make sure you’re on the same page with the web or data team about what those parameters should be, including how UTMs are formatted.

Beyond tracking the email channel, what else do you want to know? If you’re sending multiple campaigns, use parameters that help you identify the success of one email from another. You could even track whether subscribers are clicking on specific elements like buttons, text links, or product images.

Another challenge with tracking Black Friday email performance relates to increased privacy measures from mailbox providers. Yes, we’re still talking about Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP). These features can inflate open rates, making it unclear how well your subject line really worked. However, you may be able to use email analytics to see which subscribers are using MPP.

Discover how Sinch Email on Acid can help you find out which of your subscribers are using Apple’s MPP. Once you know, you can segment those contacts so you can review their metrics separately, giving you a clearer picture of open rates.

9. Ignoring abandoned cart emails

The holidays are hectic, and everything goes into full gear right after Thanksgiving. Black Friday shoppers are getting tons of emails, visiting loads of websites, and inevitably… some items will get left in their online shopping carts.

If you aren’t already using abandoned cart emails, now is a good time to start. And if you do send these reminder emails, you may want to adjust your strategy for Black Friday. That could mean different messaging that adds urgency to bring people back before a promotion ends. Or it could mean adjusting the timing of these automated messages. Maybe your abandoned cart emails need to be sent sooner – before the shopper makes a purchase somewhere else.

According to TechReport, the global cart abandonment rate (CAR) is over 75%, and it’s at its highest during holiday shopping. Abandoned cart emails can help with that.

According to statistics from the ecommerce personalization platform, Bariliance, abandoned cart emails see open rates as high as 49%. So, nearly half of those messages get opened. The average click rate is close to 9% and the typical conversion rate (meaning a recovered transaction) is around 8%.

10. Transactional email deliverability issues

When your brand does earn those Black Friday sales, email comes into play once again. Transactional emails keep your customers informed with order confirmations, shipping updates, and more.

These messages can be extremely important during the holidays when getting a package on time matters more than ever. But what happens when transactional emails land in spam or get blocked from delivery? That’s a huge Black Friday mistake.

One way to prevent transactional messages landing in spam is to separate transactional mail streams from promotional emails using separate subdomains. For more on this approach,

A sudden spike in email volume and sending frequency during Black Friday may also prompt mailbox providers to filter your messages into spam, especially if you’re using a new IP or domain. So, an IP warmup may be necessary first.

Get more Black Friday email deliverability advice in a free, on-demand webinar from Mailgun.

11. Failing to follow new sender guidelines

Speaking of email deliverability, Gmail and Yahoo announced new bulk sender guidelines this year that you better be following if you want to reach inboxes on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

These updated sender requirements are designed to make the inbox a safer and all-around-better place for email recipients. Here are three of the most important things to know.

1. Use email authentication: Bulk senders (aka anyone sending mass email marketing) must use the SPF and DKIM email authentication protocols. You also need to implement DMARC using a policy of at least p=none.
2. Make it very easy to unsubscribe: Bulk sender must have one-click unsubscribe functionality following what’s known as RFC 8058. This lets your contacts unsubscribe from inside their inbox provider’s user interface – not just that little link in the footer.
3. Keep spam complaint rates low: Senders should try to keep user-generated spam complaints below 0.1% (that’s 1 out 1,000 emails sent). Your spam complaint rate should never reach or exceed 0.3%.

Gmail and Yahoo are two of the most popular mailbox providers. Unexpected deliverability problems to either one this time of year would definitely be a Black Friday email disaster.

12. Forgetting to test and preview Black Friday emails

One of the most common email marketing disasters involves problems with email client rendering. The way your Black Friday email looks in Apple Mail might look quite different in Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, or AOL inboxes.

Emails can also render differently based on the mobile operating system as well as when dark mode is turned on. But unless you know how to sneak inside other people’s inboxes, you probably have no idea how everything looks after delivery.

Thankfully, there is a way to help prevent these disasters during Cyber Week. Email Previews from Sinch Email on Acid let you see how your big holiday campaigns render in more than 100 clients and live devices. That’s how you can find out if you need to make code or design adjustments before launching a Black Friday email. Unlike your other options, every Sinch Email on Acid user gets unlimited testing.

Optimize Black Friday emails with Sinch Email on Acid

Our email quality assurance platform does a whole lot more than show you inbox previews.

Sinch Email on Acid also helps you optimize everything from inbox display and email images to deliverability and email accessibility checks. You can even run a final check for typos and accidental profanities (yikes!) and get detailed analytics that help you measure Black Friday email campaign performance.

There’s still time to run your Cyber Week email campaigns through our pre-send email testing software. Sign up for a 7-day free trial today to find out how beneficial our email testing tools can be.

The post Black Friday Email Marketing 2024: Avoid These 12 Disastrous Mistakes appeared first on Email on Acid.

I recently co-hosted an Email Academy webinar on the topic of design with my colleagues from Sinch Mailjet. There were plenty of users from both Mailjet and Email on Acid in attendance. When we surveyed people about their biggest design struggles, responsive email design topped the list.

Most people have been checking emails on smartphones and mobile devices for at least a decade at this point. So, why is designing and coding mobile-friendly emails still such a headache?

It could be because responsive email design is an afterthought instead of your starting point. The first step in changing your ways involves a simple switch in your code. For some email developers, this is a bit of a mind shift. Many of us code responsive emails for desktop first and then add CSS media queries to adjust for smaller screens. But it may be time for you to flip that approach on its head. Keep reading and I’ll explain…

Why responsive email design is important

You don’t have to look far to find email marketing statistics and studies showing the rise in smartphone use for email viewing. At this point, it’s safe to say that at least half of all email opens occur on mobile devices.

A 2024 report on how consumers around the world engage with email found around 71.5% most often use a mobile phone to view emails while just under 4% use a tablet. Less then 25% of consumers said they primarily use a computer to check their email inboxes.

Of course, while a smartphone might be the main device used to check email, it’s not the only one. Many recipients will view an email in one environment and then go back to it later using a different device or application. For example, someone could check an email on desktop while at work, and later, engage with it while chilling on their couch that night.

You need to deliver an ideal experience no matter where the email is opened. That means focusing on responsive email design, which adjusts your HTML email campaign’s layout for different screen sizes.

Even B2B brands with email opens that trend toward desktops and laptops should consider responsive email design. Because you never know when your next big prospect is going to open an email on their smartphone.

A tale of two email campaigns…

Let’s paint a picture of why responsive email design is so crucial:

Scenario 1: Non-responsive nightmare

Imagine you’ve just launched a flash sale, and your email goes out to thousands of subscribers. But uh-oh – the design isn’t mobile-friendly. Your CTA button is tiny, the text is unreadable without zooming, and the image files are so large they take forever to load. The result? Frustrated customers, missed sales opportunities, a spike in the unsubscribe rate, and a collective groan from the rest of the marketing team.

Scenario 2: Mobile-friendly dream come true

Now, flip that script. Your flash sale email is designed and coded to respond to various screen sizes. Some contacts see a single-column layout on their phones while others see featured products in a three column design when it’s opened on desktop. The CTA button stands out and and is easy to tap – not just click. There’s excellent readability and the images are optimized for quick loading. The result? A successful campaign in which your email drove more traffic and sales than any other marketing channel.

Here’s a visual example of a problematic email design. It’s from almost nine years ago, so we’ll give Macy’s some grace (and hope by now they know better). One look at this campaign and you can probably see the big issue. Just imagine trying to tap on those product category buttons not to mention read some of that text on a mobile phone.

If your goal is to optimize emails for conversions, you need to be sure people can engage with what you’re sending. But we should mention… a mobile-friendly email isn’t quite the same as a responsive email.

Mobile-friendly vs. responsive email design

Let’s clarify the difference between mobile-friendly and responsive: A responsive email should be mobile-friendly, but a mobile-friendly email is not necessarily responsive.

While you can follow best practices for mobile-friendly emails, that’s not the same as a responsive email. Responsive email design means your email’s layout, font size, buttons, email content, and more adjust and adapt to deliver an ideal experience on different screens. To make this happen, you either need to know how to code emails, or you need to be using responsive email templates that are already coded adapt to screen sizes while using a drag-and-drop email editor.

Of course, you could also have an email that adjusts to different screen sizes, yet it still doesn’t look or function well on mobile devices. To deliver the best experience you need to take two steps:

1. Make sure your email is responsive.
   • That typically means using CSS media queries
2. Make sure your email is also mobile-friendly.
   • This means following email design best practices for a good mobile experience.

Why is responsive email design a challenge?

Inbox Insights 2023 from Sinch Mailjet found that email senders around the world identified responsive email design as a major challenge. It’s an especially big deal for those who code email marketing campaigns.

While just over 36% of all survey respondents selected Responsive emails as one of their three biggest challenges, more than 42% of email developers selected that option. Find out more in our article on the email developer perspective.

So, what is it that makes responsive email design so challenging and how could a mobile-first approach change things?

For one thing, it’s easy to default to a desktop-first approach to email development. After all, that’s the environment in which we’re writing code. As a result, however, we end up developing emails for larger screens first, and that can make things more difficult in the long run.

For example, taking an email designed for desktop with a three-column layout and re-coding it to look right on various mobile devices is going to require a lot of development work.

• How should those columns stack?
• How will images and text need to change?
• What mobile breakpoints should you consider?

The more code you need to write to adapt for smaller screens, the more opportunities there are for minor mistakes that cause things to break. One missing curly bracket and suddenly the entire email layout is messed up.

On the other hand, when you start with a simple layout for viewing emails on smartphones, and then expand the design for desktop, it’s a different story. If subscribers viewing emails on desktop end up seeing the mobile layout for your email campaign, it will still look fine, and they can still engage.

But you can’t say the same thing about viewing the desktop version of an email on mobile. That’s why mobile-first email coding is a safer bet.

How to switch to mobile-first email coding

Arguably, the most popular way to achieve responsive email design with code is to use media queries.

Now, it’s certainly possible to develop responsive emails without using media queries. Fellow email geek Nicole Merlin has an excellent write-up on her process for coding responsive emails without media queries. However, in this article, we’ll focus on coding with media queries.

At this point, media query support for screen size is well supported across nearly all of the major email clients. (Check out CanIEmail.com for the latest.) That’s what I use for responsive email design. And when you code for mobile first, media queries are fairly foolproof.

The biggest switch for most people will be using min-width media queries instead of max-width. By simply doing that, you’ll be taking a mobile-first approach to email development.

Media queries: max-width vs min-width

When you learned to code responsive emails with media queries, there’s a good chance you were told to use the max-width property, which is essentially a desktop-first mentality. That may have made sense for a lot of senders 10 years ago, but things have changed.

So, what’s the big difference between min-width and max-width?

Desktop-first = max-width

When you use the max-width property, you are essentially telling email clients that your desktop styles are the default, and you use media queries to adapt for smaller screens. The max-width describes the maximum width before your mobile styles stop being applied. So, your styles should be ordered from largest to smallest.

In other words, max-width indicates that: If the screen size is less than or equal to X, then do Y.

Here’s how you might code a basic two-column email for desktop using a max-width media query that would stack the columns for mobile viewing:

                            

                                <style> :root { color-scheme: light dark; supported-color-schemes: light dark; font-size: 16px; font-color: #222; } h2 { margin: 0; } .column { width: 50%; display: table-cell; padding: .5em; } @media screen and (max-width:480px) { .column { display: block !important; width: 100% !important; } .column:last-child { margin-top: 2em !important; } } </style> 
                            
                        

View this code on Parcel.

Basically, what we’re saying is that any code nested in the max-width media query should only trigger if the screen size or viewport is less than 480 pixels. When the screen for a mobile device, or a browser window on desktop, is under 480px, the columns will stack.

The class .column sets each div’s display property to table-cell, which allows the columns to function like a table. The media query says to use these styles when the screen size is above 480px. (Note: the parent div’s display property needs to be set to table for this to work.)

Then you need to change the display property to block for mobile and set the width property to 100%. You also need to use !important to override the code above the media query.

Mobile-first = min-width

When you use the min-width property, you are telling email clients your mobile styles are the default, and you use media queries to adapt for larger screens. The min-width defines the minimum width before styles start being applied. So, you’d list your styles from smallest to largest (AKA mobile first).

In other words, min-width indicates that: If the screen size is greater than or equal to X, then do Y.

Here’s the same basic code for a two-column email layout. Except, this time we are using a min-width media query and coding for mobile first. It’s still set to 480 pixels, but now it will apply desktop styles when screens are larger than 480 pixels.

                            

                                <style> :root { color-scheme: light dark; supported-color-schemes: light dark; font-size: 16px; font-color: #222; } h2 { margin: 0; } .column:last-child { margin-top: 2em; } @media screen and (min-width:480px) { .column { width: 50%; display: table-cell; padding: .5em; } .column:last-child { margin-top: 0; } } </style> 
                            
                        

View this code on Parcel.

One thing you may notice with the min-width example is that the code is actually a little cleaner and more concise. You only have to set the .column class in the media query to a width of 50% (instead of 100%) so that two columns display when desktop styles kick in. You don’t have to set it as a block element, you just use display: table-cell.

I’m also using a pseudo-class .colum:last-child to add some spacing around the mobile or stacked version of the email, which gets overridden and removed within the media query.

When you take a desktop-first approach, you end up overriding a lot more than that in those media queries. However, if you do mobile-first email coding, most of the mobile styles you set will transfer to desktop.

Plus, if your media queries don’t work, the mobile styles will be displayed by default. Things may look smaller than you intended for desktop screens, but the layout won’t break, and subscribers may not even know the difference.

That means you actually have to change less when you do things mobile first. Plus, your desktop styles end up being much shorter rather than having really long mobile styles that override so much from desktop.

Using min-width is also helpful for those using the Gmail app with non-Google accounts. Those so-called GANGA accounts can have lots of rendering issues in which media queries break.

The truth about mobile-first email development

While I am a big believer in coding for mobile screens first and using min-width to make thing responsive, I seem to be in the minority, which is a bit surprising.

When we conducted an informal, unscientific poll of Sinch Email on Acid’s LinkdedIn followers, we found that most email developers are using max-width media queries. Only 11% take the mobile-first approach and use min-width. In fact, more people are using the fluid hybrid email coding method, which practically skips media queries altogether.

This could be one of those “But that’s how we’ve always done it” sort of situations. If you learned to code emails using max-width, that might be a hard habit to break. But if you ask me, the advantages of using min-width for mobile-first responsive emails outweigh the challenge of updating your code.

7 tips for a mobile-first email design system

Before you start coding emails with a mobile-first mindset, you may have to rethink the way your campaigns are designed to begin with. Responsive email design is faster and more efficient when you’ve got a defined system to follow.

If you’re not already using an email design system, this would be the perfect opportunity to start. And if you already have a defined system, you’ll simply need to make some adjustments. Here’s some essential advice…

1. Email design mockups

If you’ve been scaling down emails designed for desktop in an attempt to make them more mobile-friendly, you’ll need to rethink your approach.

It may be easiest to switch everything to one-column email layouts no matter the screen size. Simplicity is definitely important in mobile-first email creation. However, it’s not the only way.

Try rethinking your responsive HTML email templates with the beginning and the end in mind. In other words, how should an email template be displayed on the smallest and largest screens? Instead of thinking about how elements of a desktop layout will stack on mobile, consider how a responsive, single-column email could “unstack” or expand on larger screens.

Create mockups for mobile and desktop while keeping breakpoints in mind. The most common mobile breakpoint is 480px, but some smaller iPhones are 320px.

2. Font size

Take a close look at your primary font as well as any others you’re using in your font stack. Make sure the text size is readable on handheld devices.

While 16px font is generally considered a best practice for accessibility, I chose to bump up the font size for mobile emails to 18 pixels in our design system. With the fonts our brands use, it felt like 16px was just too small for smartphones, especially with the high-resolution displays on some devices.

Remember that “best practices” aren’t hard rules, and they sometimes need to be adjusted for different situations.

3. White space

Give your mobile-first emails room to breathe. Adequate white space in email design is important for a good mobile experience.

Space between elements makes it easier to consume information and understand the message you’re delivering. Leaving white space around important features like calls-to-action or product images helps draw the viewer’s eyes to that part of the design.

Keep paragraphs nice and short because big blocks of text are harder to read on small screens. If you have text links that are very close together, it can be difficult for recipients to tap the right thing.

4. Tap targets

Speaking of tapping, that’s one of the biggest differences between the mobile and desktop user experience. Your subscribers are tapping with a finger or thumb – not clicking with a mouse and cursor. No matter how compelling and creative your CTA button may be, if the touch target is tough to tap, your click rate is going to suffer.

The minimum recommended size for accessible tap or touch targets is 44px x 44px. That size is based on the average adult finger pad, which is around 10mm. You may want your buttons to be even larger than that. There are some email developers who recommend using full-width CTA buttons because it makes them easier to tap with a thumb if someone is using one hand to operate their device.

5. Columns

While a single-column layout is going to provide the most mobile-friendly email design, there could certainly be situations in which you would use columns without stacking all the contents.

I once did this in Email on Acid’s newsletter for April Fools’ Day, which mimicked the look of a Myspace page as a fun throwback. For the section of the email displaying the “Top 8” friends, I used a two-column layout on mobile and four columns for desktop viewing.

It wouldn’t have looked quite right if that Top 8 was single profile photos stacked on top of each other. But since these were just small, thumbnail-sized images, two columns worked fine.

You could also do something like this in an ecommerce email featuring a spread of product thumbnails. Or two columns could work as a mobile-friendly photo gallery in an email. What you don’t want to do is put body copy in columns on mobile emails as that would most likely be difficult to read.

For each campaign you create, carefully consider the subscriber experience on different screen sizes.

6. Retina displays

Most computer monitors have high-resolution displays as do Apple devices using Retina display technology. For these screens, you’ll want your images to look nice and sharp.

For that to happen, use images that are twice the size at which you want them to ultimately display on the largest screens. So, in our example from earlier, an image displaying at 600 pixels wide should be 1200 pixels for its actual size.

Doing this provides a greater pixel density, so that the images don’t look blurry on Retina screens.

7. Image file sizes

While you want those images to look crisp, you shouldn’t slow down email load times with huge image files. This is especially important for mobile-first email development because you never know when recipients could be somewhere without high-speed internet. Plus, it’s good to be mindful that people may have limited data plans as well.

What you don’t want is to have subscribers staring at a blank screen waiting for the images in your email to load. So be sure to compress images and try to keep their file size to 200kb or less. Using too many animated GIFs in emails can also cause slow load times. Each frame in a GIF is its own image. Try to keep GIFs to less than 1mb.

Benefits of the mobile-first approach to responsive email design

As we wrap up this deep dive into mobile-first email design, let’s recap why this approach is worth your time and effort:

1. Simplify your workflow: Starting with mobile designs and expanding for larger screens is often easier than the reverse.
2. Improve user experience: With more people checking email on mobile devices, a mobile-first approach ensures your message looks great where it’s most likely to be seen first.
3. Future-proof your emails: As mobile usage continues to grow, your emails will be ready for whatever new device hits the market.
4. Boost engagement: When emails are easy to read and interact with on mobile, you’re more likely to see higher click-through and conversion rates.

Remember, responsive email design isn’t just about making things look pretty (although that’s a nice bonus). It’s about creating better experiences for our subscribers, boosting engagement, and ultimately driving better results for our email campaigns.

Test your responsive email designs before sending

There’s only one way to be certain your email campaigns are rendering the way you want on mobile devices – and that’s by testing and previewing them before hitting the send button.

If you’re updating templates to support responsive email design, you can use Sinch Email on Acid to see exactly how they will render on the most popular mobile operating systems and devices. Take advantage of our Email Previews to see how the most important clients render your code.

While there are plenty of platforms that let you see how an HTML email looks on mobile and desktop in general, our solution goes much further. You’ll get screenshots from actual email client renderings. So, for example, test and preview how your email looks in Outlook on an iPhone, or how it looks on the on the Gmail App in dark mode. Customize your own testing profile for the clients and devices you want to see.

Our email quality assurance platform also provides checks for accessibility, deliverability, inbox display, URL validation and more. It’s an ideal tool for optimizing campaigns and simplifying the complexities of email marketing. Every paid plan enjoys unlimited email testing. Take Sinch Email on Acid for a test drive with a one-week free trial.

The post Responsive Email Design Challenges? Try Mobile-First Email Coding appeared first on Email on Acid.

Dark mode throws yet another wrench in the gears of email development. However, if you know what you’re doing, you can optimize the inbox experience for both light and dark mode emails.

If you’re ignoring dark mode, it’s likely that some of your subscribers are opening your HTML email designs only to find an unreadable mess. So, let’s shed some light on this shadowy subject and explore how to create emails that look great, no matter the mode.

What is dark mode anyway?

Dark mode is a display setting that can be turned on and off for many devices, applications, and operating systems. Essentially, it changes the user interface so that instead of seeing the traditional dark text on a light background, there’s light text on a dark background.

So a background with hex code #FFFFFF and text color hex code of #000000 switches.

In dark mode, the background hex code becomes #000000 and the text hex code switches to #FFFFFF.

Here’s how that might look when viewing an email in light or dark mode on a mobile device:

Dark mode UI was the norm back in the ‘70s not long after email was invented. Picture those old, boxy PCs with black screens and glowing green text. Light mode eventually became the standard along with LCD screens in the ‘90s.

Twitter and YouTube were among the first popular services to offer dark mode. In 2019, Microsoft, Google, and Apple followed the trend and began offerring dark or “night mode” options for their programs and operating systems.

In 2023, Twitter/X made the move to make its dark mode UI the default. At first, Elon Musk said it would be the only option. Apparently, he believes dark mode is “better in every way.” But backlash from users prompted the company to bring back a light mode setting for the platform.

Once Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook started offering dark mode, email marketers began paying attention too. Here’s how an old Email on Acid newsletter looked when we first started testing our own stuff in dark mode four years ago. It’s not terrible. But it’s not ideal either.

Why dark mode matters in email

Remember when dark mode was just a niche preference? Those days are long gone. Dark mode has rapidly become a mainstream feature, with recent studies showing that a significant portion of users prefer dark mode for at least some of their digital interactions.

Of course, those studies on consumer usage of dark mode settings vary. What you really want to know is how many of the contacts on your list are opening messages in dark mode. Advanced Email Analytics from Sinch Email on Acid let you do exactly that. Find out more about tracking dark mode opens on our platform.

But we digress… Why do people love dark mode so much? Let’s break it down:

1. Eye comfort: Many users find dark mode easier on the eyes, especially in low-light conditions. This can be particularly beneficial for those who check their emails late at night or first thing in the morning.
2. Reduced blue light exposure: Some studies suggest that reducing exposure to blue light, especially in the evening, can help with sleep patterns. Dark mode is one way users try to achieve this.
3. Battery life: For devices with OLED screens, dark mode can significantly extend battery life. This is because OLED screens can turn off individual pixels when displaying black, consuming less power.
4. Aesthetic preference: Let’s face it, some people just think dark mode looks cool. It can give a sleek, modern feel to interfaces.
5. Reduced screen glare: In certain lighting conditions, dark mode can help reduce screen glare, making it easier to read content.

Whatever the reason, there’s a good chance a significant portion of your subscribers are viewing your emails in dark mode. As email professionals, it’s our job to ensure our messages look great in both light and dark environments.

The challenges of dark mode emails

Before we jump into solutions, let’s break down the main challenges of dark mode emails. Understanding these hurdles is the first step in overcoming them:

Color inversion in dark mode: When your design flips

One of the primary challenges with dark mode is color inversion. Many email clients automatically invert colors when switching to dark mode, turning light backgrounds dark and dark text light. While this sounds simple in theory, in practice it can lead to some unexpected results:

• Your carefully chosen color scheme might be completely altered, affecting the overall look and feel of your email.
• Important design elements, like buttons or call-to-action areas, might lose their impact or become difficult to distinguish.
• Subtle color differences that worked well in light mode might become indistinguishable in dark mode.

In this example, purple may be a primary brand color you use for calls-to-action in emails. But the inverted green button may not fit your brand at all.

Brand consistency in dark mode: Logo visibility issues

Your brand’s visual identity is crucial in email marketing. However, dark mode can mess up your email branding efforts:

• Logos designed to stand out on a light background might suddenly become invisible on a dark background.
• Brand colors carefully chosen for light backgrounds might clash or become unreadable when inverted.
• The overall “feel” of your email might shift dramatically, potentially disconnecting it from your brand’s usual aesthetic.

Here’s what can happen if your logo isn’t optimized for viewing emails in dark mode:

For a bunch of options on how to handle this, check out our tips on fixing dark mode logo problems.

Accessibility and dark mode: Unexpected contrast issues

While dark mode can benefit some users with visual impairments, it can also create unexpected email accessibility issues:

• Color contrasts that worked perfectly in light mode might become problematic in dark mode.
• Text that was easily readable on a light background might become strained on a dark background, especially if the font weight isn’t adjusted.
• Important visual cues or separators might disappear or become less noticeable in dark mode.

Email clients and dark mode rendering

Like usual in the world of email development, it’s never as simple as having a dark mode and non-dark mode, all email clients that feature dark mode will handle it slightly differently.

As explained in this excellent article from our friends at Parcel, you can break down the different dark modes to three different modes; full inversion, partial inversion and no change.

Full inversion will change both your font colors and your backgrounds, partial inversion is very similar but will largely leave your backgrounds untouched, no change won’t inverse any of your content.

Apple Mail and dark mode

In Apple Mail’s dark mode, it tends to invert pure black (#000000) and pure white hex (#FFFFFF) codes. Apple Mail will completely disregard contrast or other-such rules if you have those hex codes and invert them regardless.

We advise to choose slightly different hex codes, such as #000001 or #FFFFFE, the difference in color is not noticeable and it’ll help you avoid any surprises.

Gmail and dark mode

As is often the case, Gmail can often throw a bit of a curveball when it comes to how it handles our dark mode emails, simply because there are so many versions of Gmail, ranging from iOS to Android to regular old Gmail, nailing down a solution can be quite tough. Previewing your campaigns in dark mode on Gmail helps you understand how to build the best experience for those subscribers.

If you’re struggling with Gmail on iOS dark mode, you can try this insanely clever solution by Rémi Parmentier, utilizing blends (which are supported in Gmail) to control how your email looks when dark mode has its way.

Outlook and dark mode

Ahh, now we get to it, the elephant in the room; Outlook. One significant issue is how Outlook handles color inversions. In dark mode, where backgrounds become dark and text becomes light, Outlook might struggle to accurately invert colors, leading to unexpected and sometimes undesirable outcomes. This can result in poor readability, visual inconsistencies, and an overall less-than-ideal user experience.

Additionally, Outlook’s dark mode implementation might not fully align with standard development practices, introducing quirks and challenges for email developers. These issues can range from the rendering of background images to the handling of certain styles, making it crucial for email designers to employ specific strategies to ensure their emails look as intended in Outlook’s dark mode.

If you’re struggling to get text readable in Outlook, Nicole Merlin has an amazing guide on tackling font colors in Outlook’s Dark Mode, includin

Illuminating solutions for dark mode emails

Now that we’ve outlined the challenges, let’s dive into some strategies to help you navigate the murky waters of dark mode email design:

Setting the stage for dark mode: Meta tags and CSS

The first step in creating dark mode-friendly emails is to tell email clients that your email supports both light and dark modes. You can do this by adding specific meta tags to the <head> section of your email:

                            

                                <meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark">
<meta name="supported-color-schemes" content="light dark">
                            
                        

These meta tags essentially say, “Hey, email client! This email is designed to work in both light and dark modes.”

To complement these meta tags, you should also include the following in your CSS:

                            

                                <style type="text/css">
  :root {
    color-scheme: light dark;
    supported-color-schemes: light dark;
  }
</style>
                            
                        

This CSS reinforces the message that your email supports both color schemes.

Detecting and adapting to dark mode: Media queries

Once you’ve set the stage, you can use CSS media queries to detect when dark mode is active and adjust your styles accordingly. Here’s an example:

                            

                                @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
  body {
    background-color: #1a1a1a !important;
    color: #ffffff !important;
  }
  h1, h2, h3, p {
    color: #f1f1f1 !important;
  }
}
                            
                        

This media query says, “If dark mode is on, use these colors instead.” It’s a powerful tool that allows you to create a tailored dark mode experience.

However, it’s important to note that not all email clients support this feature. It works great in email clients that support media queries, like Apple Mail and Outlook for Mac. But some clients, like Gmail, don’t support this feature, so you’ll need to have fallback options.

Making your logo visible in dark mode: Image swapping techniques

Your logo is a crucial part of your brand identity. So, ensuring it’s visible in both light and dark mode is essential. Here are some strategies:

• Use transparent PNGs: This can work well, but be cautious of dark text or elements disappearing against a dark background.
• Add a light outline or glow: This can help your logo stand out in both modes but be sure it doesn’t affect the logo’s appearance in light mode.
• Create a dark mode version of your logo: This is often the best solution. You can use image swapping techniques to show different versions based on the mode.

Here’s how the code might look if we wanted to display different logos in dark and light mode:

CSS:

                            

                                @media (prefers-color-scheme:dark) {
    .dark-mode-hide{
        display:none!important;
    }
    .dark-mode-show{
        display:block!important;
    }
} 
                            
                        

HTML

                            

                                  <img src="https://marketing.emailonacid.com/hubfs/NORMAL-EoA-Logo.png" width="150" alt="Email on Acid" border="0" style="display:block;max-width:150px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:9px;line-height:12px;color:#ffffff;font-weight:bold;" class="dark-mode-hide">

  <!--[if !mso]><!-->
  <img src="https://marketing.emailonacid.com/hubfs/images/logos/DARK-MODE-EOA-Logo.png" width="150" alt="Email on Acid" border="0" style="display:none;max-width:150px;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:9px;line-height:12px;color:#ffffff;font-weight:bold;" class="dark-mode-show">
  <!--<![endif]-->  
                            
                        

Note: the code under <!–[if !mso]><!–> is Microsoft Office conditional code that tells Outlook to ignore the dark mode logo. With Outlook,  you can also use the tag “mso-hide:all” to keep elements hidden in dark or light modes.

This code tells email clients to use the dark mode logo when dark mode is active, and the light mode logo when it’s not. You can use this same technique for other important graphics in your email design.

Of course, there are simpler solutions, like the glow or outline trick.

Here’s how the Sinch Email on Acid logo would display in dark mode with a white stroke that outlines text and fills in gaps (Note: Graphic designers often hate this technique):

Optimizing images for dark mode emails

Images play a crucial role in many email campaigns, but they can be tricky to handle in dark mode. Here are some tips, many of which are similar to handling dark mode logos:

• Use transparent backgrounds: This allows your images to blend seamlessly with both light and dark backgrounds. Otherwise, you could get an unsightly white background around images in dark mode.
• Add a subtle outline: For images that might get lost on a dark background, consider adding a light outline.
• Create dark mode versions: For key images, you might want to create dark mode-specific versions and use the image swapping technique we discussed for logos.

Ensuring accessibility in dark mode emails

Email accessibility should always be a priority in your design choices, and dark mode adds an extra layer to consider:

• Check contrast ratios: Use tools to ensure your text meets WCAG guidelines for contrast in both light and dark modes.
• Use sufficient font sizes: Smaller text can be harder to read in dark mode, so err on the side of larger, clearer fonts.
• Don’t rely solely on color: Use other visual cues (like icons or underlines) to convey information, not just color differences.
• Test with screen readers: Ensure your dark mode optimizations don’t interfere with screen reader functionality.

Handling dark mode across different email clients

Given the inconsistent implementation of dark mode across email clients, it’s crucial to have a strategy:

• Design for the lowest common denominator: Ensure your email looks good in clients that don’t support dark mode or advanced CSS.
• Use progressive enhancement: Layer on dark mode optimizations for clients that support them.
• Test extensively: Use tools like Sinch Email on Acid to preview your email across different clients and modes.
• Have fallback options: For elements crucial to your message, consider providing alternatives that work in all scenarios.

Best practices for dark mode email design

Now that we’ve covered the technical aspects, let’s look at some overall best practices for designing dark mode emails:

• Start with dark mode in mind: Don’t treat dark mode as an afterthought. Consider it from the beginning of your design process. If you have an email design system, dark mode should be part of it.
• Use a dark mode color palette: Develop a set of colors that work well in dark mode and align with your brand.
• Avoid pure black backgrounds: Very dark greys are often easier on the eyes than pure black.
• Be careful with shadows: Shadows that look great in light mode might disappear in dark mode.
• Test, test, test: Always preview your emails in both light and dark mode across various clients and devices.

Testing: The key to dark mode email success

Here’s where we put on our problem-solving hat. Testing your emails in dark mode across different clients is crucial. That’s where Sinch Email on Acid comes in handy. Our email quality assurance platform lets you test and preview your emails in dark mode across various clients and devices, helping you catch rendering issues before they reach your subscribers.

With Sinch Email on Acid, you can:

• Preview your email in both light and dark mode
• Test across multiple email clients and devices
• Identify and fix rendering issues quickly
• Ensure your emails look great for all subscribers, regardless of their mode preference

Plus, track dark mode email opens in with our analytics so you can see exactly why optimizing for dark and light mode is worth the effort.

Don’t be afraid of the dark (mode)

Dark mode in email doesn’t have to be a headache. With these tips, techniques, and testing strategies, you can create emails that look great whether your subscribers prefer the light side or the dark side.

Remember, the key to mastering dark mode emails is thorough testing and a willingness to adapt your design process. By considering dark mode from the start, using the right tools and techniques, and testing thoroughly, you can ensure your emails shine in any setting.

So go ahead, email pros! Embrace the challenge of dark mode and create emails that look fantastic no matter how they’re viewed. And when in doubt, test it out with Sinch Email on Acid. Your subscribers (and your peace of mind) will thank you.

More dark mode email resources

Dark mode is an ever-evolving problem that email developers are tackling every day and new and exciting solutions are cropping up all the time. It’s impossible for us to cover everything about dark mode in just one article, so we have a great selection of other resources.

• Video: Email After Dark: Coding For Dark Mode
• Video: How To Prepare Your Email Design System for Dark Mode
• Webinar: Expert Advice: Designing Dark Mode Emails
• Article: Dark Mode vs. Light Mode: Which Is Better?
• Article: How to resolve issues with email dark mode

The post Master the Art of Dark Mode Email Design and Coding  appeared first on Email on Acid.

The more things change, the more things stay the same. High school kids still get stereotyped as jocks, nerds, rebels, goody-two-shoes, and outcasts. Humans love to put labels on everything, right?

So, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Let’s slap some labels on our favorite email clients and mailbox providers and imagine what they’d be like if they attended Inbox High together and we were the vice principals.

The Breakfast Club of email clients

Have you ever watched The Breakfast Club and sympathized a little with Vice Principal Vernon? (No? Just me?). After all, he had to show up for detention on Saturday too, and what’d he do wrong?

Dealing with email client rendering issues has got to be almost as annoying as babysitting unruly teens with raging hormones. And just like Breakfast Clubbers Brian, Bender, Andrew, Allison, and Claire – each email client has idiosyncrasies you must take into account before you hit send.

Here’s where we think major mailbox providers and email clients would land if they were one of the typical high school stereotypes.

Gmail: The Jock

Every high school has that over-achieving, multi-sport athlete who is good at just about everything. They even get pretty good grades – although we all know the teachers go easier on the kids who are good at sports.

Like jocks, Gmail has some skills that other email clients don’t. For instance, AMP emails allow you to bring interactivity to Gmail inboxes, but not many other email clients support the framework yet. Jocks also tend to throw their weight around a little. Like for instance, how Gmail led the way in implementing new rules for bulk senders if they want to avoid the spam folder.

Getting your message clipped in Gmail is the email geek equivalent of a getting a wedgie or a swirly from a high school jock.

Of course, there’s also the “dumb jock” stereotype, and sometimes Gmail seems to fit that too. Like why is it that a Google service like Gmail doesn’t support Google web fonts? And why does Gmail cause so many dark mode email development challenges?

From the email developer’s perspective, there’s no ignoring Gmail. Without a doubt, a significant portion of your subscribers are using this email client regularly, So, that means finding ways to deal with problems like message clipping and hyperlink colors.

Check out these articles:

• Developing HTML Emails for Gmail: 14 Tips for Coding
• Gmail Email Clipping | How Developers Can Avoid It
• AMP Emails vs. HTML: What Gets Higher Conversion Rates?

Apple Mail: The Popular Girl

If people were voting for the prom queen of email clients, it would have to be Apple Mail. Thanks in part to the popularity of iPhones, there are a ton of people using Apple Mail to view their emails. But how popular is it?

According to an article on Apple Mail demographics from Sinch Mailjet, it could be as much as 54% of the contacts on your list. Kate Nowrouzi is VP of Deliverability and Product Strategy at Sinch Mailgun. She says that, among Mailgun’s users, more than one-third of opens were occurring on Apple Mail.

Speaking of open rates, like any self-respecting popular girl, Apple Mail cares a lot about respecting privacy.

The arrival of Apple Mail Privacy Protection (AMPP) threw many email marketers for a loop. But AMPP didn’t mean the death of email. We all found ways to adjust, and stronger privacy protection is better for everyone.

The nicest thing about Apple Mail is that it offers more support for HTML and CSS features. The website Can I Email places it at the top of its Email Client Support Scoreboard. No wonder everyone loves it.

Check out these articles:

• Find Out if Your Subscribers Use Apple Mail Privacy Protection
• 7 Tips for Designing and Developing Emails for the iPhone
• How to Use Media Queries in HTML Emails

Outlook: The Troublemaker

Shouldn’t a Microsoft product like Outlook be considered a nerd and not troublemaker? Obviously, you can be a little of both. Go ahead and ask any email developer you meet. The Outlook email client causes just as many headaches for email devs as Ferris Bueler did for his school principal.

It’s probably safe to say that at least 80% of the time when someone asks why you have to go out of your way to code something in an email, it’s because of Outlook. You’ll find it all the way at the bottom of Can I Email’s scoreboard of email clients. As of this writing, Outlook for Windows (the desktop versions) only supports 52 of the 219 CSS and HTML features that Can I Email is tracking.

For example, the main reason email developers use tables for layout is thanks to Outlook. Concerns around using GIFs in email marketing can also be blamed on Outlook. Many issues with blocked images and padding/spacing can be traced back to Outlook as well. However, Outlook inboxes are home to many B2B subscribers. Plus, anyone who still uses a Hotmail address (they do exist) is viewing their emails in Outlook, too. 

But here’s the thing… Like the classic high school movie trope where the nerd is actually cool, the plain girl is actually beautiful, Outlook may go through a transformation. A new Outlook for Windows could mean the end of all those troubles the Word rendering engine has caused.

So, like a high school troublemaker with hidden potential, you just keep working with Outlook and believe the wayward email client changes its ways someday.

Check out these articles:

• Outlook HTML Emails: How to Fix 11 Common Rendering Issues
• How to use GIFS and GIF Fallbacks for Outlook Emails
• How to Create Excellent Emails for Outlook.com

Yahoo Mail and AOL Mail: The Hipster and the Trendsetter

Hipsters take pride in their appreciation for things that are outside of the mainstream. They liked that band/movie/style everyone likes now before it was cool.

Back in the ‘90s, AOL Mail was the biggest email provider in the world. It had 9 million users in 1997. Today, there are around 4 billion people using email across the globe. For those of you keeping track at home, 9 million is 0.00225% of 4 billion. 

Still, you have to give AOL credit for its role in email history. People got hooked on their inboxes thanks in part to that irresistible “You’ve got mail!” notification.

Also in the ‘90s, Yahoo! saw the rise of webmail coming and acquired RocketMail, which was one of two of the world’s first free webmail services. There’s no denying Yahoo! was an internet pioneer, and its email service was a big part of that. But sometimes pioneers die of dysentery along the Oregon Trail.

Yahoo Mail may not have the same size user base as the big three email clients (Gmail, Apple Mail, and Outlook). But it’s a been somewhat of a trendsetter. Yahoo was right there with Gmail introducing new rules for email senders in 2024. It also supports AMP for Email, which is good news for those who love coding interactive emails.

While AOL and Yahoo Mail aren’t the most popular kids in school anymore, email marketers and developers still need to keep them in mind. There are still 1.5 million people paying for an AOL subscription. And Yahoo Mail still has well over 225 million users.

It’s unlikely that subscribers using these email clients make up a very large portion of your list. But if you strive for email perfection, you should keep an eye on how campaigns render in these mailbox providers too.

Other email client characters

Even smaller email clients could represent other stereotypical characters in a teen comedy.

For example, it’s easy to picture Thunderbird as the classic nerd archetype. It’s an open source email client that Mozilla developed to pair with its Firefox browser. Mozilla stopped supporting it in 2014, but the community kept it alive, updating the software and making donations. It’s since become part of a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. We love it when the nerds win in the end. There are still around 25 million people using the Thunderbird email client.

Samsung Email is like the quiet shy kid nobody notices at first. It works a lot like Apple Mail in that users can get messages from different mailbox providers and email addresses in one place. It obviously comes pre-installed on Samsung phones and has some features that its users really like, including a simple and intuitive UI. 

Then, assuming this is an American teen comedy, there are a handful of email clients that are like quirky foreign exchange students.

• Web.de is Germany’s top email client with 17 million customers.
• Free.fr is a French telecommunications company with a popular webmail app.
• Libero.it provides an Italian webmail service with around 11 million users.

Of course, the big three email clients (Gmail, Apple Mail, Outlook) are also very popular in regions besides North America. But if you’re developing emails in Europe or for a global company, it’s smart to pay attention to these smaller email clients as well.

The final exam for email clients

We realize comparing your work in email marketing to a cranky high school principal isn’t exactly flattering. But try to think of yourself more like Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell. He always wanted what was best for the kids. Or maybe you’re more like Dumbledore, trying to get a bunch of young Hogwarts students under control.

At some point, you’ve got to put these email clients to the test. That’s where an automated pre-send platform like Sinch Email on Acid is an excellent solution. With email testing, you can preview your campaigns on the most popular clients and devices.

Using Email on Acid is like having the best hall monitor in history. You’ve got someone keeping an eye out for issues so you can prevent those troublesome email clients from rendering your campaigns the wrong way. 

Sinch Email on Acid also helps you optimize for inbox display, accessibility, and deliverability. Take advantage of the free trial and see how it works today!

The post What if Gmail, Apple Mail, Yahoo, and Outlook were High School Stereotypes? appeared first on Email on Acid.