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Can I use custom fonts in my emails?

Sharon Jennings
  • Updated

Yes, you can, but you can't do it directly in Ometria, and you'll need code changes to your master templates. 

You'll need to contact your Customer Success Representative - this work is usually chargeable.

There are two font types for email:

  • Custom fonts: These are fonts that you handpick to create a unique look for your emails. 
  • Web-safe fonts: These fonts are universally available across different devices and platforms, ensuring a consistent appearance for your email content.

Options for web-safe fonts

Serif fonts

  • Georgia
  • Times New Roman

Sans-serif fonts

  • Arial 
  • Helvetica
  • Verdana

Using custom fonts

There are some challenges to be aware of when using custom fonts:

  • Font support: Custom fonts are not available on all devices, which means font fallbacks might impact your email's design and readability.
  • Testing complexity: Testing custom fonts across various email clients, devices, and screen sizes can be time-consuming and result in layout differences due to varying fallback fonts.

Support for custom fonts

Custom fonts are not universally supported by all email clients:

Email client Custom font support
AOL Mail No
Apple Mail Yes
Gmail No
Gmail App No
iOS  Yes
Office 365 No
Outlook App No
Outlook.com No
Outlook for Mac Yes
Outlook 2013-2021 No
Outlook Office 365 (Windows and Mac) No
Samsung Mail No
Windows 11 No
Yahoo! Mail No
Remember that if you have the custom font loaded onto your device, it will likely display correctly in the app you're using.

Getting started with custom fonts

To begin using custom fonts in your emails, take these steps:

Licensing

Make sure that you have the necessary licensing rights for the custom fonts you intend to use, as many fonts are protected by copyright.

Contact us

Reach out to your Customer Success Representative to raise a request with the Creative Team.

Send your files

Provide the font files in one of the following formats: ttf, woff, woff2, eot, or otf.

Note: You'll need to send separate files for bold and regular weights, as well as italic styles. Due to file sizes and loading speeds, we limit the number of font files to six. (e.g., two fonts in three styles or three fonts in two styles).

Please define clearly which font should be used for headings and which for body text.

Applying custom fonts

This is what we do to make custom fonts work with your email templates:

  1. Font hosting: Custom fonts are hosted outside of the Ometria platform.
  2. Code integration: We add code to the <head> section of your master templates to make the custom fonts available for use.
  3. Font application: Throughout the templates, we add code to specify which font should be used where.

To make sure your fonts render consistently, we use font families like:

font-family:'custom font', arial, sans-serif;
font-family:'custom font','times new roman', serif;

The email client will attempt to use the custom font first and, if unavailable, will proceed through the specified font stack. 

We default to Arial for sans-serif fonts and Times New Roman for serif fonts, but you can request alternatives.

Exploring additional fonts

Between your custom font and the web-safe font in the stack, we can incorporate other standard fonts like Trebuchet, or Garamond if they closely resemble your custom font. 

This provides flexibility in achieving your desired email design.

Further reading

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