Topic
Background:
When utilizing the Word to email template Merge feature (configuring a Word template document to be used as the email body when sending emails), the formatting or layout of the final email body that is sent may look different across multiple email clients (Gmail, Outlook, Outlook for Mac, Yahoo, etc.).
Email Client Differences
The root cause of the email body being displayed differently is due to how different email clients interpret and render HTML in emails. As an example, some clients will automatically apply some padding or margin after a paragraph to provide some spacing between other elements (other paragraphs, tables, etc.). In other clients, the spacing is not applied. This issue most commonly arises when customers are sending emails to Outlook.
For further reading on what is or is not supported review the link below:
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/
Instructions
What To Do
Get the Email to reflect the formatting of the document package: Word to email template
- Place the document content inside of a table. This will help to constrain the content to a fixed width.
- Insert blank rows with a specified row height to ensure linebreaks are respected in the email output. This will require configuring the body of the document so that each block of content is in its own row in the table.
- Make sure the template does not have any soft returns (SHIFT + ENTER) which will produce ?'s in the body of the template
Additional Resources
- Sign up for a free 7 day trial of Litmus Test below to test how the template renders across email clients: https://litmus.com/pricing