Email marketing is the most effective marketing strategy you can use for your business, online store, and blog. New deals, new content, and tips delivered right to your customer’s inbox can have a crucial role in converting casual visitors into loyal customers. That being the case, you can understand how important it is to take care of the minute details of email marketing. The font that you use for email marketing plays a significant role in the presentation of your emails. In this article, we will discuss how to choose the best fonts for email marketing.
What Are the Characteristics of the Best Fonts?
Although you may want to use any font you want for your emails, not every font will suit your purpose. More importantly, not all fonts look good in an email. If the font you have chosen does not look good, the reader will not bother to read the email.
There are various reasons why the font you use will fail to grab the reader’s attention. And this has nothing to do with your sense of design. Rather, it has to do with a few technical considerations. Here are the factors you should consider while choosing the font for your email marketing campaign.
Readability
The main objective of email marketing is that your email engages the reader. How likely will your customer bother to read your email if it is not readable? Readability is the prime and unavoidable factor when it comes to emails. User retention depends largely on the readability of fonts used in email.
How should you ensure email readability? Make sure you use a proper type of font. Later in this article, we will discuss the five types of fonts that you can use. Once you have the right kind of font, focus on the font size. Font size plays a large role in readability. Smaller fonts are difficult to read. Fonts with proper size and spacing significantly boost the readability.
While designing your email, ask yourself if you can read the fonts comfortably. If it takes more than usual attention to read the email, you would not want to use that font.
There is one more factor that affects the readability of a font. That is the compatibility of the email client of the recipient.
Email Client Compatibility
Email service providers like Gmail, Outlook, etc., support a certain set of fonts. These are called email-safe fonts. Users can choose from the fonts offered by the email service they are using. These are the default fonts in which the plain text of your email will appear. Since these are email-friendly fonts, you can be sure that your message will be displayed correctly. When you use fancy fonts, the chances are that the message will not appear properly to the email recipient.
If you are using HTML emails, you will find it easier to use web-safe fonts to achieve the desired effect. There are a lot many web-safe fonts freely available for use. Since these are popular fonts all over the internet, readers will find it comfortable to read your email. Below we have listed popular web-safe fonts. Google fonts are the best resources for web-safe fonts. This list of top 10 Google Fonts will help you find what’s trending.
Device Compatibility
The desktop is not the only place where readers will access the emails. Mobile devices of various display sizes are important to keep in mind. The fonts, therefore, should look comfortable on all types of devices. This means that you will have to ensure the proper size and line spacing for the fonts you choose for your email.
What are the Types of Fonts?
Let’s have a look at different types of fonts. This understanding will help you select the proper font for each purpose.
1. Serif Fonts
Serif fonts have extended edges that look decorative. These fonts are very popular and are often used in the body of any content. Times New Roman, Georgia, Merriweather, Playfair Display, Lora, PT Serif, Noto Serif are some of the widely used serif fonts.
2. Sans Serif Fonts
Unlike Serif fonts, Sans Serif fonts do not feature extended edges. These fonts look modern and are widely used on the internet. Roboto, for example, is the most popular Sans Serif Font all over the internet. Sans Serif fonts exude professionalism and confidence. You can use these fonts for headings.
3. Modern Fonts
Modern fonts have a structured style with a professional look. These can feature either serif or sans serif styles. Modern fonts are rarely slanted as most of these focus on the vertical stress for the overall look and feel. The user experience is significantly improved as these font styles incorporate varying thicknesses in each character. Modern fonts can be used for headings to emphasize the point. MuseoModeno and Modern Antiqua are two examples of modern fonts.
4. Script Fonts
Nothing is as seductive as handwritten fonts. Script fonts incorporate the handwritten style that gives them their distinctive look and style. These types of fonts are suitable for logos. You can use them for large headings if you want. However, these are not a good choice for body texts as these fonts are difficult to read. As we discussed the importance of readability, you will be better off with no script fonts in your email. That being said, these fonts are very stylish and have a distinctive visual appeal when used sparingly.
5. Display fonts
Display fonts are characterized by their uniqueness and friendly vibe. These fonts are very expressive, and they can shine when used in logos or large headings. You will find these fonts have very low readability, and we do not recommend using them in body or paragraph.
Now that we have seen the characteristics of the best fonts and a few types of fonts, let’s explore some of the best fonts for email marketing.
Best fonts for Email marketing
Here is a list of email-safe fonts. This is not an exhaustive list as you can find many other fonts that suit well for emails. These are popular and reliable fonts that look well on popular email services like Gmail and Outlook.
1. Times New Roman
This is the most popular serif font. It is used in all word-processors. The font looks readable online and in print.
2. Arial
Arial is a popular sans serif font. This font exhibits professionalism and confidence. You can use this font for headings and the body text with equal readability.
3. Tahoma
Tahoma is a sans serif font popular in Gmail. It is a straightforward and professional-looking font that is suitable for the body text. It is quite readable and distinctive at the same time.
4. Verdana
Verdana was designed for screen displays right from the beginning. It has wide characters and large spacing between characters. These features make it easier to read on-screen. Verdana is also available as a default font when you compose emails in Gmail.
5. Georgia
Georgia is one of the most popular serif fonts out there. It is readily available with the majority of email clients. Wide spacing and distinctive characters make it easy to read. This font looks elegant and decorative. Simply put, it’s just beautiful.
6. Trebuchet MS
This font comes as default in Gmail. Trebuchet is an email-safe font supported by most of the email clients. It is a sans serif font with large line heights and wider character spacing.
All of these fonts are email-safe. They will display properly in email through any email client. These fonts are included in most operating systems, devices, software, or app.
We have not included web-safe fonts in this list. Web-safe fonts exist online, but they may not look good in an email. That being said, you can always use trial and error and A/B testing to find out which fonts look great for your email marketing campaign.
You can find this article about the best email marketing services helpful. Here are the 9 tips to get more email subscribers.
If you have any questions about these fonts, or you want to share your experience with the best fonts for email marketing, feel free to share in the comments section. We are here to help you grow your WordPress website. You can surely reach out to us for any help you need.
