In this article:

At Shaman, we help our users to create and test email content for a range of email inbox providers (eg. Apple mail, Gmail or Outlook) on a daily basis. We have learnt a lot of handy tips when working with different email clients over time, but the one email client provider that we receive the most questions about is: Outlook.

Perhaps you have experienced a heading not rendering as expected when testing in Outlook, or some images which are showing with a different alignment than the one you designed? In which case, this article is for you!

We would like to thank our users who have inspired this article and we sincerely hope that this list of best practices and tips is helpful.

In Outlook, background images can cause other content elements which are placed in the same row to render unexpectedly.

Let´s take a look at an example. Here you can see a background image:

With two images placed on top (using the Image element in the content menu):

Gmail preview:

Apple mail preview:

Outlook preview:

Recommendation/ solution:

Create a single image which layers the background image with the other content elements on top:

Gmail preview:

Apple mail preview:

Outlook preview:

Consider updating the email design without using a background image (for example, splitting the background image into two columns:

Gmail preview:

Apple mail preview:

Outlook preview:

Let´s take a quick look at what are web fonts, and web safe fonts

So what happens in Shaman if you use a web font in Shaman, but the end user views the email content in Outlook? In Shaman, your account fonts are configured to always have a web safe back-up font, for any web font selected. For example, font selected: Montserrat, back up font: Arial.

You can´t see this “back up” font in the email editor, but we can see it is there, in these litmus previews that in Outlook (an email provider which does not support web fonts), the text is rendered using Arial:

Outlook preview:

In apple mail preview:

Recommendation/ Solution:

Make sure that any fonts you are choosing (web safe fonts or web fonts) are looking good across a range of email clients. If you have any doubts about the font configuration in your account, please reach out to support@getshaman.com.

Another situation we have noticed when using Outlook.com is that when a button is populated with an incomplete URL, or with a token which is being tested in Shaman (not from Veeva CRM), the button disappears, and only the token is displayed (or in the case of an incomplete URL, nothing at all).

When testing the email, the Veeva or Marketing Cloud tokens will not be recognised as a valid URL, and may cause rendering issues. When the Email is sent out from Veeva CRM or Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the tokens are replaced by valid link URL's and the button should render correctly. We always recommend final testing in a sandbox environment before making email content available in production.

Veeva token (for Veeva hosted document in this case) in Shaman:

Outlook.com preview:

Apple mail preview:

Incomplete URL in Shaman:

Outlook.com preview:

Some Outlook desktop clients do not support animated GIFs. Outlook 2016 and Outlook 2019 do support GIFs now, but other versions do not. So, check your version of Outlook, first!

Outlook removes any padding to images when they are added to the column rather than the container padding of the image itself.

Let´s take a look at this example, where we have three equally sized columns, containing an equally sized image in a row, with 10 px padding added to each column:

This is how the images render in:

Apple mail preview:

Gmail preview:

Outlook preview: We can see that not only are the images rendering without the added padded (see how they are wider than the grey text above in the Outlook preview), but also the top of the images are being cropped:

Recommendation/ solution:

Add the padding to the "General" - "Container Padding" which appears when selecting the image itself:

To resolve the top part of the image being cropped, reduce the size of the image slightly:

Outlook preview after changes are made:

It is incredibly important to ensure every person receiving your email will receive the content as you designed it, but you may be surprised to know that according to a Litmus analytics report from October 2024 https://www.litmus.com/email-client-market-share, 4.18% of people view their email content using Outlook.