Designing more accessible marketing emails

When designing a marketing email, there is more to consider than how the message looks. Your email may be read in different email clients, on different screen sizes, by recipients using screen readers, or by people working with limited internet bandwidth. Designing with these differences in mind can help more recipients successfully access and understand your message. Start with some basic design practices:

• Choose colors with enough contrast to make text easy to distinguish from its background.
• Be thoughtful about color combinations, particularly combinations such as red and green that can be difficult for some people with color blindness to distinguish.
• Avoid text that is too small or cramped.
• Choose clear fonts rather than overly decorative ones.
• Avoid making your email too visually busy.
• Use white space around headings, body text, images, and other elements to create an uncluttered design and make content easier to follow.

Add a View in Browser link

A View in Browser link gives recipients another way to access your message if their email client does not render it properly. Email clients such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and Apple Mail can display the same email differently. Images may also be blocked automatically because of email client settings, spam filtering, or other security measures. In Dynamics 365 Marketing, you can create a View in Browser link by:

• Adding text such as "View in Browser" or "See on the web."
• Highlighting that text and selecting the option to add a link.
• Selecting the personalization option.
• Choosing the dynamic content for the message's webpage URL.

When the recipient follows the link, the email opens in their default browser. This provides a helpful backup viewing option, particularly when images are important to the message.

Use alternative text for images

Alternative text provides a written description of an image for situations where the image cannot be seen. This is important for recipients who use screen readers, but it can also help when images do not load because of limited bandwidth, email security settings, spam filters, or an email client's image-download preferences. You can add alternative text through the Image Editor in Dynamics 365 Marketing. Describe the image with enough detail to communicate its purpose. If an image is purely decorative, you can indicate that the image does not need alternative text.

Include a plain-text version of your email

Plain text removes the HTML and CSS responsible for the email's visual design and leaves the message itself. Dynamics 365 Marketing automatically generates a plain-text alternative, which you can preview. If you turn off the automatic option, you will need to create or edit the plain-text version yourself. Plain text remains important because some recipients configure their email clients to receive plain-text messages only. This may be a personal preference or a way to reduce bandwidth usage. Emails without a plain-text alternative can also be more likely to encounter problems with spam filters.

Run accessibility and spam checks

Dynamics 365 Marketing provides Accessibility and Spam Checkers under the Check content option. The Accessibility Checker reviews your email and identifies issues that could make the content more difficult for people with disabilities to access. It provides descriptions of the issues it finds along with suggestions for resolving them. The Spam Checker evaluates the likelihood that content-based spam filters will flag your message. It generates an overall spam-risk score so you can make changes before sending your email.

Design emails responsively

Responsive design means creating content with different device sizes and shapes in mind, including phones, tablets, and desktop computers. The goal is to preserve usability and visual appeal as the available screen space changes. Dynamics 365 Marketing includes responsive design controls that help you adjust the experience without sacrificing the desktop version of your email.

Configure responsive section settings

Select an entire section of your email and open its Responsive Design settings. Several options are available:

• Show on mobile: Control whether the section appears on mobile devices.
• Show on desktop: Control whether the section appears on desktop devices.
• Set equal heights for columns: Keep columns within a section the same height even when their content varies.
• Wrap columns on mobile: Allow columns to stack vertically rather than being squeezed together horizontally on a smaller screen.

Showing or hiding sections based on device type can be especially useful when an element works well on desktop but does not translate effectively to a smaller mobile screen.

Preview your email on different screen sizes

After working in the designer, move to the Preview and Test area to see a polished representation of your email without the editing controls. You can preview different screen sizes and orientations, including mobile portrait and landscape views. This is an important opportunity to verify that responsive settings, such as wrapped columns, are behaving as expected. Dynamics 365 Marketing can also preview how emails appear in different email clients through Litmus. This is useful because Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, mobile devices, and other clients may render the same email differently.

Always perform a test send

One of the most important ways to check your email is to send an actual test copy. Select Test Send and enter the address where you want the test delivered. The email must first pass its error checks. These checks can identify problems such as a missing subscription center or address. You can also choose a test contact to see how dynamic content populates. Once the test email arrives, check:

• How the design renders in your email client.
• Whether links work correctly.
• Whether dynamic content populates as expected.
• Whether there are any remaining spelling, grammar, or formatting problems.

By combining accessible design practices, appropriate alternative text and plain-text content, responsive settings, built-in checks, previews, and test sends, you can create marketing emails that provide a better experience across different devices, screen sizes, orientations, bandwidth conditions, security settings, and accessibility needs.