Have you ever considered how important your font can be? Think about it this way: Have you ever read something and mistook one letter for another? And for a moment, you have to do a double take and figure out what’s actually being said. Like, there’s no wayyy that a grocery store is actually selling key lime farts. Right???
Sooo many questions here. Giggles aside, this is just one of the more ~appropriate~ examples of bad font choices. And you may be surprised to learn that even the most well-known and seemingly thoughtful brands are guilty of this offense. Choice of web font makes a huge difference, particularly when used for digital marketing on the web and in email, company newsletter and visual design. Even font style and font size make a huge difference in how consumers perceive your brand. Your font can support a certain theme, contribute to the overall feeling and personality of a piece and can seriously make or break your messaging.
Today we’re talking about font selection as it relates to email marketing. When choosing the font you use in your brand’s email campaigns, there are a few things to take note of.
Is Email Font Really That Big of a Deal?
Ummmm… YES. Fonts come in all kinds of different styles and sizes, and the way letters are displayed across email clients – including shape and spacing – can all have an impact on your reader. It’s a huge part of email design, folks. The typeface you choose has a personality and conveys a message all its own. So when things look a little off, or simply don’t line up with your message and overall brand image, your prospects will notice.
There are certain web-safe fonts that you want to keep in mind if you want to keep readers from thinking “What the…?” Take, for example, poor Ralph and Joe, who made an unfortunate font choice for their masonry company. Sorry, boys, but if your tilework looks anything like your font choice, I won’t be hiring you for my kitchen remodel anytime soon.
Here’s another one: Feeling calm yet? YA SURE??? Here, we can see that factors like punctuation and color choice play a significant role as well. Let’s try something more like: That’s much better. Worse still, when your font is off, readership and understanding will fall off as well. Recipients can easily get distracted by As that look like Cs, or say, the use of a fun, playful web font within a professional email with a serious message.
A web font that does align with your message and brand image, on the other hand, can help keep recipients’ attention, improving overall click-through rates.
Choosing Your Font: Things to Think About
Before selecting your ‘best email font’, there are few questions you should answer first:
- Why should we care about the best fonts to use in email?
- Font size, font style and overall font type make a major difference in the way you promote your brand and your message via email.
- A default font can have a very different impact on readers than a custom font.
- Font choice is a major representation of your voice and your brand and can make or break your first impression with consumers.
What kind of message are you looking to send? Is the email about something fun and exciting? Or does it have a more formal, weighty tone? All of this should play into your font choice.
For instance, Helvetica Neue offers a more polished look that might suit corporate communication, while Trebuchet MS is a system font that’s both friendly and professional.
Will you use the same font throughout? Are you looking for uniformity, or to shake things up a bit? Keep in mind, though, that best practice says you should avoid using more than two fonts. Just remember, we’re not kids playing in a word processor anymore – it’s important not to go overboard. It’s best to stick to email-safe fonts like Lucida Sans for the body and perhaps a more distinctive Sans Serif font for headers.
To bold or not to bold? Bolding certain words, or using italics can change the way a font displays and can impact overall message and understanding.
What color will you use? It’s important to think about things like background color here to ensure readers won’t have trouble. Also, keep branding and your company colors in mind, particularly with email signatures.
A web-safe font like Arial or Verdana can ensure that your emails look consistent across different email clients like Apple Mail.
Will these be HTML or plain text emails? HTML email allows you to include hyperlinks, custom fonts and other design and visual elements and are typically the best for supporting marketing campaigns and encouraging click-throughs. However, even with HTML emails, it’s crucial to use email-safe fonts to ensure that your message is accessible to all recipients.
Is it legible? I mean, that’s the whole point of email design, right? Remember to consider things like the shape of letters (certain letters can easily be mistaken for others in cursive, more flowery script) and spacing. It’s also important to think about how things will display on different-sized screens, particularly on mobile devices. The best font for email is one that maintains its readability across all devices and email clients.
Breaking Down Email Marketing Fonts: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Buckle up, because things are about to get controversial. Okay, not really — unless you have super strong feelings about your favorite or least favorite fonts. If that’s the case, it’s time to set aside your personal preferences in the name of great email marketing.
You heard it here first: When it comes to emails, the “right font” isn’t necessarily the one you’re crazy about. It’s the one that gets your message across clearly while being accessible and easy to read for everyone who opens your email newsletter, marketing campaign or other message.
So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at which font choices are safe, which are a little questionable and which should be permanently banned from your email arsenal.
Fonts: The Good
Choosing the right font family can make email body copy simple and satisfying. All that being said, there are a few typeface families that have proven to be web-safe, easy to read for email body copy and some of the best cross-platform fonts.
Serif font is characterized by short tails at the edges of letters that help lead readers’ eyes from one letter to the next. See: Times New Roman [The classic college essay fallback font], Georgia, Rockwell. These fonts are often used in print as they’re easier to read than most fancy font types – I bet your favorite book is written in Times. Writers looking for something that’s clear but also more formal and business-like should use Serif fonts.
Sans-serif includes characters without any lines or tails (get it? SANS-serif?). You may recognize these as your email default font. Brafton uses Sans-serif for many of our emails and employee email signatures, as these are some of the most web-safe fonts. This font family supports a more casual tone and includes: Arial, Calibri, Verdana. These are often top choices for email body text as they’re clear, evenly spaced and simple to read on almost any screen size. Arial is an easy choice because it’s often a default font; this makes choosing one of the most web-safe fonts virtually effortless.
Fonts: The Bad
Certain fonts – unless you’re going for a wacky, zany kind of feel (like, you’re a toy company or something) – are best to stay away from, especially in the body copy of…
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