A question I often get asked in Mailchimp training is if the font that is used on a website can be used in a Mailchimp email campaign. The simple answer is that it depends on what font-family is used on your website.
Why some fonts don’t work in email
Email reading software varies greatly in capabilities. The four major Internet browsers all mostly conform with up-to-date standards; email readers vary greatly. This means that what we know will work and look good on a website doesn’t necessarily work in an email message. Furthermore, for example, what may work for an email campaign viewed in Outlook may not present correctly in Gmail or on an iPhone.
Support for webfonts is very limited in regards to email readers. In most email readers, even if we try to load a custom font, the font just won’t load and the readers default font will be used. To complicate matters more, if you test your email campaign on your own computer (after viewing your website) your email campaign may show with your custom font (because your computer has loaded the font from you viewing your website); your contacts however will see your campaign using a standard font.
What fonts can I use in Mailchimp?
Mailchimp allow for the use of the fonts that are known to work well across all devices. These fonts are called web-safe fonts and are:
- Arial
- Comic Sans
- Courier New
- Georgia
- Helvetics
- Lucida
- Tahoma
- Times New Roman
- Trebuchet MS
- Verdana
Mailchimp also allow for certain very popular Google fonts. Even although these Google fonts require the reader to have downloaded the webfont from Google, the fonts are so widely used that it is assumed that the reader has visited a website in the past that would have forced a download of the font (i.e. so the reader will view the Google font correctly).
- Aro
- Lato
- Lora
- Merriweather
- Merriweather Sans
- Noticia Text
- Open Sans
- Playfair Display
- Roboto
- Source Sans Pro
In summary, unfortunately we cant use custom fonts in email because your email message is unlikely to display consistently for your contacts. This is not a Mailchimp limitation but rather an HTML limitation.
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