Best font for email: TOP 10

When it comes to email marketing, it is impossible to ignore the visual aspect of your message. Of course, it would be perfect people make decisions based on the main thing – content. But we have to take into consideration that the receiver of the letter evaluates visual elements even quicker than text. As marketing is connected with psychological issues as well, we need to work on the design, choosing the proper color and the best font for an email in order to make the message more attractive. This article we decided to dedicate to the topic of the font selection and its importance in the business email. After email address verification please create a quality email marketing campaign with right fonts.

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When choosing the best font for emails, you should consider weight, height, width, color scheme, shape, and spacing. These are the minimum requirements that really matter. The most important thing is to choose a font that you can call easily readable. To do this, follow 3 basic rules:

• No more than 2 fonts that complement each other. E-mails, filled with fonts of various styles, will have a complex look and can even annoy the reader. One or two fonts for a message is a good option. However, the best option is to choose one, while you can “play” with different sizes. In capital letters, highlight the title, in lower letters write the rest of the text.

• A preliminary test of custom fonts on various gadgets. Many people prefer web-based fonts. They are absolutely sure that they appear the same on all devices. And it is usually the case. But if you decide to use their own font, be prepared that it appears distorted. It may not be displayed on the reader device at all. To do this, conduct preliminary testing. This test, among other things, will also show whether the selected font is supported by some mail services.
  
• Readability is a critical factor. In this case, legibility of the text is needed. Also you should mind the fact that different characters of the same font can be legible or not. Of course, legible text is easy and quick to read. Make sure that absolutely all the characters are visible, clear and well distinguishable from each other. 

The topic mentioned in the last paragraph of our basic recommendations became the basis for research by Norbert Schwartz and Hyunjin Song. They conducted an experiment in 2010 to determine the legibility of fonts. Scientists have found that italic and decorative fonts take up 2 times more reading time than standard classic fonts.

However, the best email font can be italic or decorative font. Many of them are successfully used to create attractive headlines, slogans, brand names, signatures, etc.

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Why You Need to Choose the Best Email Font?

Your personal taste is not an accurate “judge” in this case. There is a high chance that your opinion will not be shared by the receivers. As a result, your email will not be read in the best case. The worst scenario may include annoying the person and being considered as spam with all consequences.

Too many typefaces can make your message hard to read and even your best offer will be missed due to lack of design work. Stick to one or two (top) best email fonts in your letters instead. When you need to highlight something, it is a good trick to use different sizes for the particular text parts. The best approach is using web-safe variants as you cannot be sure that the receiver uses the same clients as you.

Every choice must be driven by the main task: deliver the message with the highest level of readability. No matter how beautiful the font is to your taste if it takes twice much time to read the email. Keep it in mind.

You can choose the best font for email, guided by the following factors:

• Branding. A printing house is the most important aspect in the shaping of a company’s brand. It also creates an impression about you for your customers and business partners. Choose fonts so that they reflect your corporate identity and business specifics. If the nature of your company’s activity involves a lot of seriousness and formality, we recommend avoiding regular font change, new products, as well as fonts in decorative style.

• Readability. Choose clearly readable fonts so that your subscribers and business partners immediately grasp the thought you want to convey. Letter-spacing is just as important as the size of the letters. Therefore, the font should be suitable for scanning and skimming, regardless of which electronic devices readers use.

• Neutrality. Take a closer look at neutral fonts, because this is an eternal classic. Moreover, neutral fonts are always ideally combined with other elements of email, as well as aspects of postal services. You should understand that the main task is not to distract attention from a call to action, following a link or clicking a button. You need the reader to remember the content, but the logo or slogan can take on the visual effect. 

Want to know what is the best font for emails? To get started, read what really cool fonts are based on.

Elements to consider when choosing the best font for emails

Before you start using the best font for email 2020 in your campaigns, consider the recommendations on accessibility, because they solve the following problems:

• provide an opportunity to read your letters for people with color blindness;

• provide an alternative way to listen to letters for people with visual impairments;

• use Siri and its ability to read letters when they are driving or busy;

• provide readability for people with dyslexia.

Take note of the following accessibility rules:

• consider the contrast of colors;

• align the text to the left;

• be sure to add punctuation marks;

• adhere to a font size of 14 px;

• do not underline the text and avoid italics;

• highlight accents in bold;

• do not use a solid caps lock.

Well, now let’s go directly to the business email font elements.

Consistency

Make your email campaign memorable considering fonts and other basic design elements. Using different typefaces, even it is the best font for email to your opinion, in the part where there was another one in the typical newsletters may look ridiculous and confuse the subscribers.

Instead put some efforts on the discovering what elements and formatting will be suitable for your brand, message, and preferences of the audience and then stick to the selected variants of design.

Proper Size

As we already said before, the main task is to provide subscribers with readable text. People do not have a duty to read your emails unless they are interesting and attractive to them. So when you use too small or too big typeface, even when it is professional email signature font, you in some way make it uncomfortable to read your message.

This aspect is particularly important in cases when your email is about to be read on the mobile device. It is hard to read tiny objects on such screens and zooming it brings more discomfort. Huge letters require much more space and to read such text you need to scroll too often, which is distracting. However, if your target audience is old people who likely have problems with their vision, so you can think of using big objects.

According to Litmus research, almost 54% of emails are opened on the mobile devices so you need to pay attention your letter will be readable on any platform and screen. Recommended size is about 16 px (not smaller than 14 px for sure).

Line Spacing

After choosing the optimal font size for email, make sure that the line spacing also meets the requirements. The best interval size varies between 150-200%. 

Font color

When choosing a color scheme, be guided by the following rules:

• The minimum number of colors. It is necessary to use only those shades that are in the color scheme of your brand. Using more than 3 colors will make the text unreadable. For example, you can take 2 colors and make the header one of the colors, highlighting it with a different size or font. Use bold to highlight a sentence or phrase.

• Contrast colors. Bright colors can be used in holiday letters for business partners. Nevertheless they should be contrasting. At the same time, red text on top of green buttons and white on gray is a terrible bad taste that is hard to read. For content, choose black and dark gray. For a black background, a white font. 

It is not recommended to use a light gray tone for the text, it is difficult to read due to the different contrast range settings.

Text over banner  

This is a great opportunity to apply professional email font in an unusual, handwritten or decorative format. If, for example, you did not have such a chance when creating the main canvas of the text, then you can experiment with the text on top of the banner. As part of the image, the text on top of the banner can have any kind of look. The main thing here is to make sure that this element matches the style of your brand and further emphasizes its individuality. Although you can choose any of the fonts you like, it should still be readable. By the way, the banner should not contain too much text either.

Unique or inappropriate fonts

Your desire to be unique and special is understandable. However, it is tricky to use typeface the majority of people do not get used to. Moreover, they can face the problem your unique font is not displayed on their computer or device. And eventually, your message and fancy design will be useless.

Also, you need to consider the appropriateness of the best font for emails you use. This is the case when you have better to follow some common practices rather than showing your individuality. Common business options are Times New Roman, Arial, and Helvetica. This is the recommendation is on the same level as the business language during the real-life business meeting.

Links in letters

It is not recommended to use a different font to draw attention to links. It is strictly forbidden to add links without the anchor text. Anchor’s task is to clarify where the link leads, and the text itself is an organic part of the content. The words “here” or “link” will not work. It is too short, generalized and not interesting. A great solution is to highlight the link text in the same color as the logo. Also, links should not be underlined. 

Buttons in emails

The button is the same link, while it has a more interactive user form. After choosing the best font to use in email, use both links and buttons. For articles in the blog use links, for product testing, a call to purchase use buttons. There are no hard restrictions regarding the color of the button. However, do not forget about color psychology and do not destroy the design concept with an overly bright palette.So for the buttons the most professional font for email would be Georgia or Verdana. By the way, Georgia is also useful for headings and subheadings. It will look very cool!

It is important to make sure that the color scheme for the text of the letter is in harmony with the shade of a button. At the same time the content should attract attention and be easy to read. Finally, check the location of the text in the button itself. In no case should it protrude beyond the edges of the element.

How to choose the best font for business email

It is not surprising that there is no single right answer which typeface is the best. However, studying the best practices we can distinguish some options from which you can select the best font for your business email. You can select variants from the following list in accordance with your task, target reader preferences, and other criteria.

These fonts are also called web safe. They can be used with a 100% guarantee and be sure that they are correctly displayed in the incoming mail. Choose your best font for business email from the TOP 10!

1. Times New Roman. You can hardly find the person who is not familiar with it. For many years it will the most widely used font. Moreover, every device will be able to read and display it. Considering people’s reaction, it is usually neutral and they concentrate on the message, even more, when the design does not attract attention at all.
2. Georgia. Georgia is a professional font for email that has become popular in digital marketing. According to Typedia description, it combines legibility, character, and charm. It looks both elegant and pleasant to read. At the same time, it is displayed well on small screens or displays with low resolution. It is much more like Times New Roman but a bit rounder and bigger compared to it.
3. Helvetica. This is one of the most used fonts of the sans-serif type (without little “wings”). Thanks to its plain and minimalistic look, Helvetica is often used by default in the majority of applications. But it cannot be the best font for a professional email signature. The main flaw of it is the difficulty of reading large bulks of text. This is because of form and space specifications. Letters are placed closer to each other comparing to other typefaces like Georgia, for instance, and visually merge together. Helvetica is fine for titles and headers, but not for the main text.
4. Arial. Being created in 1982 for IBM’s xerographic printers, it was soon licensed by Microsoft for use in Windows as a default font. This is was a real competitor to Helvetica. Due to some similar features, Arial is often called “Helvetica’s ugly cousin” by designers and marketers. This is due to fact that it embodies the things they do not like in Helvetica. As its “relative”, it is good for headers and titles as well but it is not a good font for email signature or body.
5. Courier. This serif font is monospaced. It means that every letter and mark use the same horizontal space on the page. Comparing to other typefaces, Courier is harder to read as our eyes do not get used to such approach of letter placing. However, the main advantage of it is that horizontal columns will be neat with it. It is not often used in marketing can be appropriate in some niches. It imitates the documents typed on typewriters – warm and aesthetic experience.
6. Verdana. It seems this font has been created to fix flaws of Arial and Helvetica. There is more space between letters and the letters like b, d, p, and q are more distinguishable. So readability here is on the higher level. Verdana adds a bit of informality in the message, what makes it suitable for newsletters. And it is good for body text. Some marketers also consider it to be the best font to use for an email signature.
7. Impact. The name tells a lot about its purpose. The main features here are bold strokes and compact spacing. That is why it also can be used in titles and headers. Marketing images will benefit from such text as well. But the body text in Impact will be hard to read. Blocks will be visually merged, especially on mobile screens.
8. Tahoma. The main attractive feature of it to marketers is the complete Unicode character set. It means that the text will look the same when written in other languages with non-Latin letters. That is why it is often used for newsletters that are delivered to an international audience. However, there may be compatibility issues as Tahoma is not as often acceptable as Georgia or Verdana.
9. Baskerville. This typeface is also less common but still is among good email fonts used by some marketers. Due to compatibility issues, it can be substituted by Georgia or Times New Roman on some devices.
10. Comic Sans. It initially was used in comic books. Now Comic Sans is a well-known typeface considering internet communication. Due to its first placing, it feels playful and informal. That is why Comic Sans is used for unserious topics. Perhaps, you can write text with this font while selling kid products.

It often happens that you have a desire or need to use a unique font. This may happen when it is necessary to observe the style of the brand or create a greeting card for some special occasion. In this case, you can use custom fonts, but it is recommended to test them first. The important thing is how they are displayed by different mail services, on different devices and in operating systems.

Note that mail services may not support certain custom fonts. In this case, the text will be displayed, but the unique font will be replaced by default. Having looked at the list of default fonts for popular mailers, you can guess what this or that custom font will look like if it is replaced:

• iCloud Mail uses Helvetica;

• Gmail uses Arial;

• Microsoft Outlook uses Calibri;

• Outlook 2007/2010/2013 uses Times New Roman.

When choosing font for email, many people prefer serif fonts, while others, on the contrary, avoid such solutions. Serif fonts have small dashes at the ends of each character. This is clearly seen in fonts such as Times New Roman and Georgia. Sans Serif fonts do not have such decorative elements. These are Arial, Trebuchet MS and Helvetica.

What is the best font for professional email? Here, the opinions of experts are divided. Some studies suggest that serif fonts are best suited for business correspondence, while others insist on sans-serif fonts. In this case, it should be noted that letters are mostly viewed online, on a desktop or mobile screen. Since the characters without dashes are more readable, respectively, and similar fonts should be chosen.

Find the best email font for your brand

Use the recommendations and materials of this article to decide what the best font for your business emails is. The result will depend on the purpose of your letter. The main guiding lines will be the following:

• make sure your text is readable on every device and platform;
• stick to the average size and dark colors to provide readability;
• avoid font modifiers in footers;
• test the email before starting the campaign to make sure everything is displayed properly.

The common strategy of choosing the typeface, size, color and other features is to follow best practices and respectable competitors. That is how you learn to build your own design being sure the target receiver will accept it.