What is and is not allowed in an Email?

What kind of content can I include in an email?

1. Text

Every ClickDimensions email editor allows users to type in any text they would like to include in their email. Users can also paste text from other sources, such as Microsoft Word, but it is strongly advised to use the 'paste as plain text' option if doing so. Directly pasting content from other programs can bring over unique formatting code that email clients may not be able to interpret correctly, resulting in issues such as incorrect spacing or fonts. This tends to be an issue especially when viewing an email in Outlook, although it can also be present when using other email clients, such as Gmail. 

2. Images

Every ClickDimensions email editor allows users to add images to their emails. Emails can be uploaded into our Image Manager, allowing them to be easily accessed across different email templates.

3. Links to Web Content Records

Links to any forms, surveys, subscription pages, or landing pages that the user has created in their CRM can be added to their email using the hyperlink manager (freestyle and drag and drop) or respective web content buttons (block editor and custom HTML editor).

4. Links to Documents

Links to documents, such as PDFs, Word files, Excel files, calendar files can be uploaded to the ClickDimensions File Manager and linked to in any email template the user creates. Please Note that ClickDimensions emails do not support "attachments" in the regular sense.

What kind of content can I not include in an email?

1. iFrames

Email Clients do not support displaying records such as forms or surveys directly within emails, so any ClickDimensions web content records made by the user cannot be placed directly onto email templates. Alternative options to share this content with your recipients is to link to the web content records or to insert an image of the record and link the image to the actual record.

2. Non-HTML5 Video

It is possible to add video embed code from a site such as YouTube to a ClickDimensions email template and have the video display within the template. However, email clients do not support video playback, so a video embedded directly into an email template will not display for the recipient unless they view the email within their web browser. Alternative options to share video content with your recipients is to link to YouTube, Vimeo, or other hosting page where your video is located, or to insert a screenshot from the video and have that image link to your video.

What kind of content can I use to an extent?

1. CSS

It is possible to style an email with CSS, but CSS support across different email clients is inconsistent. As such, more consistent styling can be obtained by using inline styling instead. For example, the float property is supported by Apple Mail, iPhone/iPad mail, Yahoo, and Gmail, but is not supported by Outlook 2007/2010/2013.

2. GIFs

Like CSS, support for gifs is inconsistent across different email clients. Some (Outlook 2007, 2010, and 2013 on Windows) email clients treat GIFs as a static picture and only load the starting image, while most other email clients (including web/browser based clients, mobile, tablets, and other Mac OS/ Windows desktop clients) will load them just fine!

3. HTML5 Video

A few email clients, such as Apple Mail support HTML5 videos and will allow the video to be played within the client. Any email clients that do not support HTML5 videos will display a fallback image in place of the video. The following table provides a breakdown of which email clients will play the videos and which will not.