There are some email clients which have difficulties displaying fonts which aren't deemed "email-safe." For this reason, Mail Designer 365 allows you to set up fallback fonts within a text style, so you have complete control over how your design is displayed to readers.

What is a fallback font?
A fallback font is the backup font which is displayed if your chosen font is not available. If your recipient's computer cannot display your first choice font for whatever reason, it will work its way through your list of fallback fonts until it reaches one it can display. In Mail Designer, you can set up multiple fallback fonts within one text style, but all text styles will set up at least one fallback font from our list of email-safe options.

Setting up a fallback font

After you have added a text style to your email copy, you will see a box labelled "Email-safe Font" under the "Style" menu.

To choose from the selection of email-safe fonts, click the dropdown menu. Your email-safe font will then be displayed if your first choice of font isn't.

To add an additional fallback font, click on the button.

As long as you already have an email-safe font set up, you can choose any font in Mail Designer 365 as a fallback:

If you wish, you can continue to add fallback fonts to a text style by repeating the last step.

Sometimes, you may want to emphasise a certain word or phrase within a section of text. Examples of this could include italicising phrases, making individual words bold, or changing the color of some words.

If you use the regular text formatting options to change these words/phrases, your format options will be applied to the entire section of text and override your style settings.

Use the "Emphasis" tool to only apply changes to certain parts of your text block.

Add emphasis to text

To begin, highlight the word or phrase you want to emphasise. This will open the Style menu in the sidebar.

In the Style menu, scroll down to the heading "Emphasis." Here you will find various options for text formatting:

Select your preferred formatting options and they will be applied to the highlighted areas of text only. You can include as many different emphasis options as you like to a section of text.

Removing emphasis from text

Removing emphasis from text is simple. Click on the section of text where you applied the emphasis and select "Remove emphasis." This will reset the text to your original style settings.

In Mail Designer 365, you are able to adjust letter spacing to create and save cool text styles for your email designs.

Adjust letter spacing for text styles

To get started, highlight the text you want to change. Then, open the "Style" tab.

Scroll down to "Letter spacing" here you can enter a precise percent value for how spaced out you want your letters to be. Alternatively, you can use the up and down arrows to test out different amounts of spacing.

Once you're happy, your text style will be automatically saved with these settings for letter spacing.

Why use text styles?

Text styles help ensure your email text stays consistent throughout your design. They make editing faster and more streamlined and help prevent compatibility issues after sending your email template.

Within a text style, you can define a primary font and an email-safe fallback font. The fallback font is displayed if the primary font is unavailable to your recipient.

Accessing text styles

To access text styles, select text from a text area to open the Format section of the sidebar. Here you can see any existing text styles your team has created and add new ones if needed.

Access text styles in the sidebar under Format

Default text styles

All Mail Designer designs include predefined default styles for your headline and body text. When you add a new layout block, the default style will automatically be applied.

To change the default text style for your document:

• Go to the styles list and click the arrow next to the style you want to set as default.
• Select Use as default for....

Update the default style for your newsletter

Switching between text styles

Click into the paragraph you want to edit, then select a different style from the sidebar. This will apply the chosen style to the entire paragraph.

Adding additional text styles

If you need more than the default Headline and Body styles:

1. Highlight the text you want to create a style from
2. Click Add style from selection in the sidebar:

   

3. Enter a name for your new style so it’s easy to find in the style menu
4. Choose the font and adjust other formatting options such as color or font size in the sidebar

   

Updating text styles

When you edit a text style, the changes will apply everywhere that style is used in your design.

For minor changes to specific words or sentences within a paragraph, use the Emphasis tool. This allows you to adjust only a section of text without creating a new style.