Outlook is notoriously challenging when it comes to email rendering. If you’ve ever experienced broken images, misaligned tables, or backgrounds that vanish in Outlook, you’re not alone. In this guide, we’ll explore proven coding techniques to help you overcome Outlook’s quirks, ensuring your emails look perfect across all platforms—especially Outlook. Plus, we’ll share some telling statistics about the popularity of Outlook to remind us why getting it right is crucial.
Why Outlook is Different
Coding emails for Outlook can be a daunting task, primarily because of its unique rendering engine. Outlook versions that use Microsoft Word to render HTML emails present many limitations—like not supporting CSS properties modern clients do. According to a 2023 survey by Litmus, nearly 18% of email opens still happen in Outlook, making it crucial to adapt and optimize email campaigns for it. Ignoring Outlook can mean losing out on effective communication with a sizable portion of your audience.
1. Background Images: The VML Hack
One of the biggest pitfalls is getting background images to display properly in Outlook. Unlike most other email clients, Outlook doesn’t natively support CSS background images, but you can work around this with VML (Vector Markup Language).
Here’s a quick VML hack to ensure your background images appear perfectly:
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
<v:rect xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" fill="true" stroke="false" style="width:600px; height:300px;">
<v:fill type="frame" src="background.jpg" color="#FFFFFF" />
<v:textbox inset="0,0,0,0">
<![endif]-->
<div>
<!-- Your email content here -->
</div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]>
</v:textbox>
</v:rect>
<![endif]-->This snippet uses VML to add a background image, which will work seamlessly in Outlook 2007 and later versions.
2. Handling Padding and Margins
Another common issue when coding emails for Outlook is unpredictable padding and margins. To achieve consistent spacing across email clients, it’s better to use table-based layouts rather than relying on CSS alone.
For example:
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td style="padding: 20px;">
<!-- Email content here -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>Using <table> tags with inline styling ensures that spacing appears consistently across Outlook, whereas relying purely on CSS margin or padding can often lead to unexpected gaps or overlapping content.
3. Media Queries: Managing Responsiveness
Outlook doesn’t support media queries, making responsive design a challenge. However, you can use “ghost tables”—essentially creating a fluid table layout that uses percentage widths instead of fixed pixels. For example:
<table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td style="width: 50%;" class="full-width">
<!-- 50% on larger screens, full-width on smaller screens -->
<!-- Content here -->
</td>
</tr>
</table>Additionally, using max-width as an inline style can help ensure that images and tables adjust to smaller screens without being distorted, which is helpful when emails are viewed on mobile devices through the Outlook app.
4. Buttons and CTA Styling
For buttons, it’s best to use VML to create bulletproof buttons that display consistently across Outlook versions. Here’s a simple example:
<!--[if mso]>
<v:roundrect xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" href="http://yourcta.com" style="width:200px; height:50px; v-text-anchor:middle;" arcsize="10%" fillcolor="#007BFF" strokecolor="none">
<v:textbox inset="0,0,0,0" style="mso-fit-shape-to-text:true">
<center style="color:#ffffff;font-family:sans-serif;font-size:16px;">Click Here</center>
</v:textbox>
</v:roundrect>
<![endif]-->VML buttons ensure that your calls-to-action stand out and are clickable, no matter which Outlook version your audience uses.
The Importance of Optimizing for All Clients
A comprehensive approach to email design ensures that every subscriber has a great experience, regardless of which email client they use. According to recent studies, 27% of B2B email opens occur in Outlook, and many business users rely on Outlook’s desktop versions. By optimizing your emails to accommodate Outlook’s unique rendering quirks, you make sure your message reaches a significant portion of your target audience without compromising on design or functionality.
5. Font Styling and Fallbacks
Fonts are another area where Outlook can cause issues. To make sure your emails look polished and consistent, use web-safe fonts with suitable fallback options. For example, if you want to use a specific custom font, ensure that you also include more widely supported system fonts as fallbacks, like Arial or Verdana.
Example:
<span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, san-serif; font-size: 16px;">This approach helps maintain a consistent look across all email clients, even when custom fonts aren’t supported by Outlook.
6. Image Gaps in Outlook
Outlook often adds unwanted gaps below images, which can throw off the entire layout of your email. This typically happens because of how Outlook handles line height and spacing around images. To prevent these gaps, use the display: block; style for your images:
<img src="image.jpg" style="display:block; border:0;" alt="Your Image Description">This ensures that no extra line height or spacing is added around the image, keeping your email layout intact across all Outlook versions.
7. Avoiding Unsupported CSS Properties
Outlook’s rendering engine, especially the versions that rely on Microsoft Word, doesn’t support many modern CSS properties like Flexbox or Float. To avoid compatibility issues, stick to older, more universally supported HTML and CSS techniques like table-based layouts. Additionally, avoid using CSS shorthand for properties like margin or padding, as Outlook might not interpret these correctly. For example:
<td style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 15px; padding-right: 15px>
<!-- Content Here -->
</td>By avoiding CSS shorthand and using explicit properties, you can help ensure that your email displays consistently in Outlook.
Coding emails for Outlook requires extra effort and planning, but the rewards are worth it. With the techniques outlined here—using VML for backgrounds, sticking to tables for layout consistency, ghost tables for responsiveness, bulletproof buttons, consistent font styling, preventing image gaps, and avoiding unsupported CSS properties—you can avoid the common pitfalls and create emails that look beautiful across all clients, including Outlook.
If you’re looking for more in-depth guides and examples, make sure to check out resources like Litmus or Campaign Monitor for more coding hacks. The extra effort you put in will ensure your emails are effective and appealing, even for the most challenging clients like Outlook.