Email clients have evolved greatly over the past few years to allow users to read and view emails in a visually and useful way. But these improvements introduced some challenges to email marketers’ campaigns. Most notably, Gmail automatically applies margins to images which can break the flow and style of an email. In this post, we will look at the issue and how email marketers can handle it so that their campaigns will show up in the right position in Gmail.
Understanding the Issue
One popular email client that developers often deal with is Gmail. But Gmail’s CSS handling is inconsistent, which can be frustrating for anyone who wants to create a visually stunning email. One example of this is the problem of not being able to place a margin around pictures from one email client to another, such as Gmail. This conflict causes the images to squish together, making the email unreadable and unreadable.
Reasons Behind the Issue
1. CSS Parsing in Gmail
Gmail has a well-developed security protocol to guard users from malicious messages. This protection extends to the handling of CSS. Gmail removes some of the most commonly used CSS properties, like display and float. This not only cleans the system from malicious scripts, but it also unintentionally impacts your email design, particularly when it comes to the presentation of images. Once these properties are unchecked, photos can be moved around, margins or gaps created which are not present in the design.
2. Limitations with Responsive Design
A third complication comes from the responsive design limitations that Gmail dictates. CSS media queries for responsive design don’t really support Gmail. This non-support causes a variety of display issues across different devices. For example, the image that might look great on a desktop could look radically different on a mobile device, with images not aligned or blank spaces. These kinds of device misalignments impact the success of an e-mail marketing campaign, and drive designers and users insane trying to get a slick, eye-catching outcome.
3. Gmail App vs. Webmail Inconsistencies
There are still more bugs with email rendering since Gmail mobile and webmail support multiple levels of HTML/CSS. A fully visually stunning email sent from a desktop webmail application might instantly lose its luster upon accessing the Gmail application on a smartphone. This variance requires further consideration for more complex design features that might not scale properly across platforms, which can complicate a design and necessitate a lot of testing.
Potential Solutions
Use Tables to Layout: It may sound archaic, but using HTML tables to layout emails can make the design consistent between different email clients. Designers can define table cells for images and use ‘cellspacing’ attribute to draw margins on those cells.
Example:
Sample Image
Padding Over Margin: Sometimes padding over margin is the best option. Padding tends to work better across email clients such as Gmail. Although padding and margin are not the same thing when it comes to box model behavior, tweaking the design can provide the desired visual effect.
Example:
Sample Image
Use an Invisible Spacer Image: The other way to overcome this is to use an invisible spacer image and define margin settings on top of it while aligning the actual image with absolute positioning. This approach can produce more predictable Gmail layouts.
Example:
Sample Image
From an Email Designer Tool/Service:
If a business or individual regularly sends emails that must be formatted in a specific way, an email design tool or service can streamline and keep everything consistent. These services offer readymade templates and enable you to easily write your HTML code. Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, SendinBlue, and other email design software all offer Gmail integration.
Test Across Devices and Platforms:
Because the mobile version and the web version of Gmail are CSS-susceptible, it’s important to validate emails across multiple devices and platforms. Intensive testing can help designers catch display problems before distributing the email to the user base.
Monitor Industry Best Practices:
Email designers and marketers must keep up with the industry best practices to get their emails to show up properly in Gmail. Among the most important best practices when designing email images and margins are:
a. Relative URLs: Use relative URLs for images rather than absolute URLs. More comparable URLs tend to work better in Gmail even if the email is forwarded or images are stored on a different server.
b. Don’t use padding and margins: Gmail doesn’t allow padding and margins around images. Use white space or transparent images to fill in the gaps around photos.
c. Layout tables: Gmail does not support contemporary CSS layouts, so for email layout you will need tables. Margin around images: Use table cells.
d. Make images email-friendly: Make images email-friendly by compressing them and using the correct file format. Use JPEG for photos, PNG for transparent background images.
e. Add alt text: Alt text is essential for accessibility and will ensure that the image will load correctly in Gmail. Make sure all images have meaningful alt texts.
Conclusion:
It is important to be aware of the concerns and challenges of email clients such as Gmail in order to get a better email marketing campaign. By fixing these issues and by creating good solutions, email marketers can ensure that emails are displayed properly and they are able to interact effectively with their readers.
