The simple answer is, different clients and devices will render emails differently. There are a few things you can do within Act-On to best set yourself up for success.
Fonts Render Differently
It is important to know that certain devices, email clients, and operating systems render typefaces differently. A specific typeface may work well on a Windows machine but show up awkward on a Mac. The reason for this is the way these platforms turn vector images into raster graphics. Some examples of similar fonts would be:
- Arial / Helvetica
- Times New Roman / Times
- Courier New / Courier
We always recommend choosing a web-safe font as a fallback, especially when you use a custom font in your email.
Know Your Audience
Use the Sent Message Report to determine who you should be creating your content for. Make a note of devices and email clients that your contacts are using. Leverage this information to determine the best strategy for your content design. Creating content specifically for one type of device when your contact base uses another could result in your contacts not receiving important information.
Test Your Emails
Testing your emails is the best thing you can do for overall success! There are two great ways to accomplish this from within Act-On.
- Send Test emails to you and colleagues to open on different devices and email clients.
- Use our native integration with Litmus to see how your email will render across a wide range of devices, operating systems, and email clients. You can configure which devices and clients are important to you from within Litmus.
- Adjust your designs after testing. Some elements like rounded corners simply cannot be fixed in some circumstances. Decide if you really need these in your design or if you want to make your design more foolproof in its display.