Email design, accessibility, and dark mode

Email design, accessibility, and dark mode

In this article you'll find best practices and recommendations for your email design, including tips on designing with dark mode and accessibility in mind. If you're having trouble with email design rendering, please email Support.

General Design

Email Size

  1. File size should be 75 KB or less. Delivra will not prevent you from designing (or uploading) a file larger than 75 KB. However, some email clients will clip an email message that is too large. For example, Gmail will clip messages at 102 KB.
  2. Recommended overall template width is 600px. We do not recommend exceeding 800px.
  3. Recommended overall template height is 1500px. We do not recommend exceeding 3000px. Some email clients will clip the message at a certain height, or you may see an image being cropped if your design includes an image that the email client determines is too tall. Note: Our drag-and-drop editor does not hard code file height.

Image Files & Sizing

  1. File size must not exceed 4MB. We recommend that you resize very large image files before upload.
  2. Stick to jpg, jpeg, gif, png file types - svg, tiff, bmp, and psd files are not supported.
  3. File names must not include spaces or special characters, other than dash or underscore.
  4. File name character limit is 100.
  5. Avoid using image maps, most email clients do not support them.
  6. Maximum image height & width is 800px (drag-and-drop editor).

Image Hosting & Media Library

  1. Use folders to help organize media files. You can setup organization directly in the Media Library before any files are ever uploaded.
    • If images are not uploaded to a folder initially, they cannot be moved after upload (it will break the hosted file path).
  2. Mass upload image files that will be used commonly like banners, logos, etc. in the Media library directly to make organization easier.

Known Outlook Rendering Issues

  1. Outlook is finicky when it comes to rendering background images. We suggest also applying a background color in the event that the background image does not display, or it does not repeat, when viewed in Outlook email clients.

  2. All buttons in your design will appear square even if you applied a curved radius. This applies to the button type of content in the drag-and-drop editor.
    • Also, only the button text will be clickable, not the entire button area.
    • If you have strict brand guidelines for buttons, we recommend that you use images that look like buttons.

  3. Text alignment should be set in the text editor. Using the cell style options to center, or right align will be ignored in Outlook.

  4. Outlook will cap the thickness of borders and display them at a max of 10px.

  5. Line spacing set in cell style will be ignored in Outlook.

  6. Image alt tags/tool tips will not display in Outlook. Outlook forces the display of the URL for security reasons.

Cell Groups

  1. Cell groups can help organize your design.
  2. Cell groups have settings specifically for mobile behavior (i.e. cell stacking).
  3. Image files used side-by-side in a cell group should be resized to the same dimensions before uploading them to the system.

Text Blocks

  1. Break up long blocks of text that contain varying text formatting into separate cells. This will lessen potential for format issues in the drag-and-drop text editor.

Mobile

  1. Use the mobile preview tool provided in the drag-and-drop editor.
  2. At a minimum, we recommend testing all campaigns to email addresses that can be checked on mobile devices.
  3. Consider using our email rendering tool for email template design.


Dark Mode

Reasons to do it

You want to work with recipients and inboxes and not against them. By incorporating elements for dark mode, you get to keep the integrity of your design without losing out on readership because your email is designed with everyone in mind.

What is Dark Mode?

Dark mode inverts your light areas and dark text to dark areas with light text. So if your email is a white background with black text, it becomes an email with a black background with white text. This affects links as well. It does not affect images.

Dark mode don’ts

  1. Do not attempt to work around dark mode by incorporating a lighter background image. This doesn’t work out as you’d expect – it will still recognize the text and background as needing to be reversed, so you’ll end up with light text on a light background.

  2.  Do not use all images. While this does ensure your email remains consistent regardless of the inbox or settings within, it’s not a good practice in general.

Dark mode do’s

  1. If you have a transparent logo that is dark, outline it with the color of your light background. This ensures the logo remains visible even in dark mode. Repeat this process with any dark transparent pngs such as icons or glyphs.

  2. With general images, keep in mind the end result. If you have a bright image that leads into a brightly colored background, if the image is not transparent, the bright background color will no longer match the image in dark mode. When possible, either make sure to have an intentional looking end point for the background of your image or make it transparent so that it can invert gracefully.

  3. If you have a background pattern or image you’d like to use, try making it as transparent as possible so that it still looks nice whether light or dark. No background pattern should be too busy, as that can affect the readability of your email.

If your email is already dark, it will not invert with dark mode turned on

Dark mode isn’t for everybody, so it’s still good to essentially have both a light and dark version. However, you can still design specifically for dark mode if you want to ensure your email is consistent all around. 

Contrast is key

Regardless of how you continue to go about creating your emails, contrast is your best friend for best visibility and readability. Make sure your text is legible against its background, and that your CTAs are clearly visible and don’t fade into their surroundings. 

Accessibility

Choose an accessible email template
If you're creating your emails using Delivra's drag-and-drop editor, build or select an email template that is simple and flexible. One or two column layouts are recommended because they are universally easier to read across devices.

Maintain a logical reading order
Screen reader technology reads from left-to-right and from top-to-bottom. For the best experience, make sure your content follows that basic guideline. If you have a two-column email format, the reader will read the left column first and the right column second.  

Avoid using tables
Template layouts that use tables to structure elements can be confusing for recipients that are using assistive technology.

Keep your code concise
An email with a lot of superfluous code can stunt loading times in the inbox and cause confusion for accessibility devices. Avoid empty and unclosed tags.

Ensure that your body copy is legible

  • A good rule of thumb is to only go as small as 14 px for your overall font-size.   
  • Have a line-height that is at least 4 pixels larger than your default font-size.
  • Pick a good high-contrast color as your default font color. While it doesn’t have to be black, it should be easy to pick out against the background of your email.
  • White space is important to give your eyes room to rest. Too much visual information is disorienting, so increasing padding and/or margins, both in the reading area and around images and CTAs allows the reader more space, literally and figuratively to process the information.
  • Avoid justified text. There are simply too many variables that make justified text incredibly difficult to control in email. In print, justified text has proper spacing between words as well as the ability to hyphenate longer words. In digital, you have improper spacing between words that make it difficult to read. As much as a jagged edge may look undesirable, it’s important to prioritize legibility over aesthetic.
  • Left-aligned text has the most legibility, as it has an obvious starting point and end.
  • Break up text whenever possible into short paragraphs.

Call-to-action
You want your CTAs to be a) obvious, b) well contrasted, and c) large enough to easily click on. For buttons, your minimum dimensions should fit your average thumb size – roughly 72 pixels x 44 pixels.

Be sure to convey what the link is leading them to. You’ll want to use something less generic than a “read more” or “click here” CTA. Those can be hard to distinguish with a screen reader. So rather than “to get the full list of sloth habits, click here” try “read the full list of sloth habits”.

Video/Animation

If you are linking to a video, or have a video in your email, include a content warning if it contains any flashing, strobing or otherwise loud or disorienting imagery. 

  • While animation can be a fun element to include, use it sparingly and effectively. Avoid bright, high contrast, strobing images, or anything that flashes more than 3 times per second on an image that is larger than a 25x25 pixel icon.
      • Also, be sure to convey all the necessary information in the animation in the first frame. Not only is this important for certain email clients that do not allow animation, there are apps that can disable animations to protect sensitive users.
  • A subtle pattern is a nice element to break the monotony, but subtlety is key. Avoid high-contrast lines, whirling patterns and anything that may create an illusion of movement.
      • Bright colors, such as red, are great for CTAs and smaller elements that you want to draw the eye to – but avoid using them as background colors or major visual pieces. Red (#ff0000) of any color is statistically more likely to cause seizures, so use wisely.
  • A busy email is a hard to read email, but it can also be dangerous to those with visual sensitivities.

Color blindness
Another important thing to keep in mind is how your email will appear to anyone who is color deficient or colorblind. 1 in 12 men worldwide have some form of colorblindness or color vision deficiency, and 1 in 200 women. Sites like https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ or https://contrastchecker.com/ and apps like http://colororacle.org/ can help you determine whether or not your color choices will be legible to all your recipients.

Emojis
Be mindful of your use of emojis and do not overuse them. Add emojis to the end of a sentence instead of between words and do not use them to replace words in your message. Avoid using emoticons altogether because the meaning is lost when screen reader tech is being used.

If you have specific questions about accessible email design, please reach out to Support to discuss.

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