By Rob Gravelle

By Rob Gravelle with Gyula Németh

In the last few months, Gyula Németh and his team have been working on a in-depth tutorial series about coding HTML emails. Every chapter discusses a different topic and they help the readers learn how they have to use ancient techniques to ensure that their newsletter looks nice on most of the email clients.

The tutorial series already covered the most important issues, so it's time to show you how to create a nice looking newsletter from scratch that will be enjoyable in most of the email clients.

The email template we will build in this tutorial looks like this:

Robust Frame

First of all, we need to create a robust framework for our template. As you can see in the preview, there are wide stripes going across the template. In each one of them, the content is aligned in the middle. The standard width for the content of the email is 600px. It has historical reasons, and it's already proven that you can play around with different widths.

In our example, we use a 800px wide header and 600px wide content:

... <center> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width:100%;max-width:800px;margin: 0 auto;"> <tr> <td width="100%" style="text-align:left;background-color:#ff00ff;"> <p style="font-family:Georgia,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:18px;padding-top:10px;padding-bottom:10px">Header</p> </td> </tr> </table> </center> <center> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width:100%;max-width:600px;margin: 0 auto;"> <tr> <td width="100%" style="text-align:left;background-color:#ffff00;"> <p style="font-family:Georgia,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:18px;padding-top:10px;padding-bottom:10px">Content</p> </td> </tr> </table> </center> <center> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" style="width:100%;max-width:600px;margin: 0 auto;"> <tr> <td width="100%" style="text-align:left;background-color:#00ffff;"> <p style="font-family:Georgia,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:18px;padding-top:10px;padding-bottom:10px">Footer</p> </td> </tr> </table> </center> ...

Check the full source of this step on GitHub.

It looks like this after the first step:

Creating the Layout

The most important part in an email template is its layout. Readers often use huge screens, so it's best to use columns to structure your email. Well, the problem is that people also use mobile devices, so the well-structured layout you came up with should be displayed differently on small screens.

In most of the cases, your columns have to be stacked on top of each other on mobile devices. It's an especially tough topic that email coders have been struggling with since the first smart phones came into existence.

Many techniques were invented, for example the table align method, TD display block method, the hybrid technique, the FAB Four technique, and the DropCalc method. In this article I will show you the last one, because that is the one I'm most familiar with. When I came up with the DropCalc method, I wanted to create a general way to create email layouts that will work on mobile email clients that don't support media queries. The code of this multi-column pattern looks like this:

<style> .col50 { width: 50%; } @media all and (max-width: 599px) { .reorder { width: 100% !important; } } </style> <!--[if gte mso 9]> <style> .ol { width: 100%; } </style> <![endif]--> ... <table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"> <tr> <td width="100%" valign="top" style="min-width: 100%;"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td width="50%" valign="top"><![endif]--> <table class="ol col50 reorder" width="100%" align="left" style="width: calc(50%);" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"> <tr> <td width="100%" valign="top"> ###LEFT_CONTENT### </td> </tr> </table> <!--[if gte mso 9]></td><td width="50%" valign="top"><![endif]--> <table class="ol col50 reorder" width="100%" align="left" style="width: calc(50%);" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"> <tr> <td width="100%" valign="top"> ###LEFT_CONTENT### </td> </tr> </table> <!--[if gte mso 9]></td><</tr></table><![endif]--> </td> </tr> </table>

Check the full source of this step on GitHub.

And it looks like this:

There are some cases when you want to add some margin around your elements, so the blocks in your columns look like cards. You should do it with paddings on tables, because that is the most stable way across email clients. The code of one of the columns changes to this:

<table class="ol col33_333333 reorder" width="100%" align="left" style="width: calc(33.333333%);" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"> <tr> <td width="100%" valign="top" style="background-color:red;padding:5px"> <table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"> <tr> <td width="100%" style="background-color:#eeeeee"> <p style="font-family:Georgia,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:18px;padding-top:10px;padding-bottom:10px">A</p> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table>

Check the full source of this step on GitHub.

The result after this step:

Adding Images, Setting Background and Font Colors

You might think that adding images is a very easy thing to do, but if you want your images to look nice everywhere, you will need to use the following code:

<div width="###WIDTH###" height="auto"> <img alt="###ALT###" width="###IMAGE-WIDTH###" style="display: block; width: 100%; max-width: 100%;" src="###SRC###"/> </div>

It's the extended version of Julie Ng's image code, and the details are described here.

I have a good rule of thumb when it comes to colors. You should always set the colors on the full-width element level. The advantage is that you always set it at the same place. It's also worth mentioning that these color properties are inherited correctly in every email client, so it's not a problem to define them on top-level elements.

Check the full source of this step on GitHub.

After this step, our template looks like this:

Call to Action

Buttons are the best way to create call to action elements. Unlike links, they are very easy to tap on mobile devices so they definitely convert better. There are four very well known bulletproof button codes, which you can read about on Litmus' blog (LINK). One of my colleagues realized that the different good parts of these codes can be used together to create a new, even more robust button code. It's based on the fact that line-height is a very robust property in every email client:

<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td> <table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td bgcolor="### COLOR ####" style="#### STYLES ####; -webkit-border-radius:3px; border-radius:3px;" align="center"> <a href="### HREF ###" target="_blank" style="### FONT PROPERTIES ###;text-decoration:none; line-height:54px; width: 150px; display: inline-block;"> <p style="### FONT PROPERTIES ###; line-height:54px;"> I am a button → </p> </a> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table>

Check the full source of this step on GitHub.

And the preview:

Typography

The final thing with which we can enhance the look of our email is to use custom fonts. In our example, we are going to use Google fonts, but you can also use your own self-hosted fonts as well.

It won't render in the same way across email clients, but it will radically increase the user experience on the modern ones.

Personally, I don't like to over complicate things when it comes to font families. I use two different font families in this example: one for the headlines and one for the paragraphs.

You have to do the following modifications in the head of your email HTML:

<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

It's best to inline font related properties, so wherever you use them, font-family should be inlined.

<h1 style="font-family:'Roboto',sans-serif;font-size:24px;line-height:32px;padding-top:10px;padding-bottom:10px">Hero Unit Title</h1>

Check the full source of this step on GitHub.

And finally, the result we wanted to achieve:

Conclusion

In this article you have learned how to create a good looking newsletter from scratch, following the chapters of the Modern HTML Email Tutorial.

Now, you might have a sense how complicated email coding can be. You have learned a way to create complex layouts with robust content images, different content widths, with bulletproof buttons and custom fonts.

If you get stuck on one of the steps, you should check out the linked resources for more information or just leave a comment below.

Rob Gravelle resides in Ottawa, Canada, and has built web applications for numerous businesses and government agencies. Email him.

Rob's alter-ego, "Blackjacques", is an accomplished guitar player, that has released several CDs. His band, Ivory Knight, was rated as one of Canada's top hard rock and metal groups by Brave Words magazine (issue #92) and reached the #1 spot in the National Heavy Metal charts on ReverbNation.com.

Gyula Németh

Co-founder & CTO @ EDMdesigner.com