Email Design Tip of the Week: Use Web-Safe Fonts
Thursday, April 16, 2009
What is a web-safe font? Why should I use web safe fonts in my email?
If you’re new to email design, you probably are wondering why there are limitations on what fonts you should use in an email. One option, of course, is to use all of your brand fonts, save them as images, and place them in your email. Easy, right? This probably isn’t the most effective way to engage with your subscribers – images are often blocked by default in a majority of email clients (see our Email Design whitepaper for more specific information on image blocking), so it’s important to place as much html text as possible in your email to successfully convey your message.
In order to successfully utilize html text, consider the following tips. To view the fonts you’ve chosen, every subscriber that receives your email needs to have the fonts you specify on their computer. As subscribers will inevitably have different fonts installed, it’s crucial to focus on a standard group that is installed on every computer by default.
> For code-savvy designers:
When creating an html paste email, CSS properties allow you to specify different values using the font-family property. Your code might look something like this:
<td style="font-family: Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: #000000;” >forward to a friend</td>
Some of our basic favorites are Arial, Georgia, and Tahoma, to name a few, but you can view an extensive web-safe list and their explanations.
> For non-coding marketers:
The ExactTarget application offers the web-safe choices of Arial, Arial Black, Arial Narrow, Comic Sans, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Tahoma, Times New Roman, and Verdana in the content editor.
All together now:
Our best advice would be to take a look at your brand, pick a font or two (or three!) that closely match and preserve your brand integrity, and get creative with font size, weight, color and placement to convey your message. Keep it simple and smart, but the sky’s the limit!
Andrea Smith
Design Consultant
ExactTarget Campaign Solutions Team
If you’re new to email design, you probably are wondering why there are limitations on what fonts you should use in an email. One option, of course, is to use all of your brand fonts, save them as images, and place them in your email. Easy, right? This probably isn’t the most effective way to engage with your subscribers – images are often blocked by default in a majority of email clients (see our Email Design whitepaper for more specific information on image blocking), so it’s important to place as much html text as possible in your email to successfully convey your message.
In order to successfully utilize html text, consider the following tips. To view the fonts you’ve chosen, every subscriber that receives your email needs to have the fonts you specify on their computer. As subscribers will inevitably have different fonts installed, it’s crucial to focus on a standard group that is installed on every computer by default.
> For code-savvy designers:
When creating an html paste email, CSS properties allow you to specify different values using the font-family property. Your code might look something like this:
<td style="font-family: Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; color: #000000;” >forward to a friend</td>
Some of our basic favorites are Arial, Georgia, and Tahoma, to name a few, but you can view an extensive web-safe list and their explanations.
> For non-coding marketers:
The ExactTarget application offers the web-safe choices of Arial, Arial Black, Arial Narrow, Comic Sans, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Tahoma, Times New Roman, and Verdana in the content editor.
All together now:
Our best advice would be to take a look at your brand, pick a font or two (or three!) that closely match and preserve your brand integrity, and get creative with font size, weight, color and placement to convey your message. Keep it simple and smart, but the sky’s the limit!
Andrea Smith
Design Consultant
ExactTarget Campaign Solutions Team
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