Ever preview an email message before sending it and wonder why it looks so bad in Outlook or Gmail? Or, have you worked hard to get images and text to line up perfectly, only to find that your email is completely broken on your iPhone?
You’re not alone! I receive emails almost daily from colleagues and clients asking for help to resolve these kinds of rendering issues. So, let’s talk about what might be going wrong and how you can fix it.
The Top 5 Reasons Your Email Design Looks Off
No matter how great your email looks in your editor, when it lands in someone’s inbox, things can get messy—and fast. Here are five common culprits that could be causing your email to break, and what you can do to troubleshoot.
1. Desktop Email Clients
Desktop clients are the programs installed directly on your computer, like Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, and Thunderbird. Unfortunately, there’s zero consistency across these platforms.
Take Microsoft Outlook for example: it currently has five major versions in use (from 2003 to the latest 2016 version). Each version renders HTML code differently, which means the same email can look great in Outlook 2016 but appear completely distorted in Outlook 2010.
Fix Tip: Use HTML tables for layout and avoid relying on styles like floats or margins, which some versions of Outlook tend to ignore.
2. Web-Based Email Clients
Then we have webmail clients like Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Office 365, and Outlook.com. These platforms come with their own quirks—there’s no universal standard for displaying tables, images, or text.
For instance, Gmail strips out CSS styles embedded in the <head> section, while Outlook.com may render certain background images inconsistently. The result? What looks beautiful in one web client might be a disaster in another.
Fix Tip: Use inline CSS for styling and keep your HTML code as simple as possible to minimize issues across different webmail clients.
3. Operating Systems
Different operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux) can alter how emails display depending on the browser or native email app used. And don’t forget about their various versions, each with its own quirks and updates.
Fix Tip: When testing, prioritize the operating systems and browsers most popular with your audience. Use tools like Google Analytics or email client reporting to gather data on what your subscribers use most.
4. Mobile Devices
From the latest iPhone 15 Pro to older Android devices with smaller screens and lower resolution, mobile rendering is a minefield. Even if your email looks perfect on a brand-new iPhone, it might be a mess on a two-year-old Android with a different screen size and app version.
Fix Tip: Use a responsive design approach. Make sure to define mobile-specific styles using media queries. Consider using single-column layouts to minimize breakages on smaller screens.
5. Email Service Providers (ESPs)
This might surprise you, but the email service provider (ESP) you use—whether it’s MailChimp, Constant Contact, or one of the countless others—can also affect your email’s rendering. Many ESPs automatically apply their own internal coding changes to your emails. This is done to optimize delivery, but it can sometimes cause unexpected layout issues.
Fix Tip: Review the final HTML that your ESP generates and test, test, test! Tools like Litmus and Email on Acid can show you how your email renders across various ESPs.
Feeling Overwhelmed? There’s Hope!
It’s not all bad news! There are fantastic tools out there, like Litmus and Email on Acid, that let you preview how your email will look in the most popular email clients before you hit send. You’ll be able to spot and fix rendering issues in real-time, saving you from embarrassing layout problems.
Leverage Your Data
Your email reports can also be a goldmine of insights. They can tell you which clients your audience is using most, so you can focus on perfecting the design for the email clients that really matter—whether it’s Gmail, Outlook, or iPhones.
For example, you might notice:
- An image placed to the right of text on a message in Outlook appears to squash the text down to a single word per line on an older iPhone.
- A full-width banner might break the layout of your message on a Samsung phone, making content stack incorrectly.
If It All Feels Like a Coding Nightmare… Call in the Experts!
I know—getting an email to look good everywhere can seem impossible. But that’s where I come in! I work on testing and refining emails daily, so whether you need help coding responsive designs or just want to troubleshoot an issue in a particular client, I’m here to help.
Reach out to me today, and let’s ensure your emails look stunning everywhere they land.