Email HTML – Do’s and Don’ts

The do’s and don’t of email HTML formatting in email program to ensure an email design looks perfect and great across all email programs.

We know that some email programs doesn’t support external CSS styles. There are no such standard method so that email program should support in each case. Each and every email program takes it’s own method to rendering HTML and CSS in their body. Some email looks great in Yahoo but may be distorted in Outlook or any other email programs.

So, let’s see how designer ensure an email HTML design looks perfect and great across all email programs.

What you shouldn’t do:

• Avoid Flash elements as most email programs ignore it.
• Avoid JavaScript. For security risk email programs ignore it.
• Except Google Form, don’t use HTML forms like surveys within your message as most of the email programs doesn’t support and submit button may not work.
• External CSS must be avoided as this may be stripped or ignored by email programs. Also don’t use “<style>” section of your HTML code.
• Avoid divs to manage your design.
• Avoid videos in your message as most email programs have trouble with embedded video. This may be stripped or ignored.
• As most of the email programs turn images off by default, so it’s better not to rely on an image only. Also too much images could make your email in a blank page when the images are off by default. Avoid background images within your design also.

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What you should do:

• Use background color as they are far better than background images.
• For a full 100% of content in your email, use 20% of your content is image based and 80% is text. This is good for email formatting.
• Use inline styles.
• Use Tables for your design. This is a good way to be sure that your design isn’t going to break somewhere.
• If you use forms, then host the form on your website and make a link to the forms.
• If you like to show video then make an image overlaid with a play button and link recipients to the video hosted on your site.