What are general best practices for email design?

In this article you'll find best practices and recommendations for your email design. If you're having trouble with email design rendering, please email Support.

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.