Email Design and Test Email look dramatically different

Samantha O'Keefe

I'm having a very hard time designing emails. It will look fine in the draft and then when I send a test email the alignment is off, some things are centered and some are left justified, and sometimes the fonts are different sizes. It takes a lot longer than necessary to create a decent looking email when you have to send a test and then guess if you've fixed something that you can't see is wrong in the design your email section. Is there any fix for this?

Matthew Garbarino

Hi Samantha. One of the challenges with the business of email marketing is that different email clients render the same exact markup in different ways. We can give the best preview we can while you are designing the emails, but it's important to test messages for this reason.



What email client are you using to test the emails that you are finding alignment and sizing issues with?

Samantha O'Keefe

gmail and outlook.

Matthew Garbarino

Samantha O'Keefe:
gmail and outlook.

Do you happen to know what version of Outlook you are using? Do the messages look better in one vs. the other between gmail and Outlook?

Samantha O'Keefe

Samantha O'Keefe:
gmail and outlook.

2007. Honestly, it starts out looking worse in Outlook but I can fix a lot of those issues. No matter what I do, there are weird spacing and alignment issues in gmail.