One of the unavoidable complications with your email marketing newsletter is that you cannot fully control the font in which it is displayed. The email reader, or the browser, that your customer uses is not guaranteed to use the font you have so diligently selected for your newsletter. This is just as true for your carefully crafted HTML email, or your web site – i.e. the font may not be available (loaded) on your customers PC. Obviously, the alternative for your newsletter is to send it as a PDF document attached to a covering email; but that’s one extra click required of your time-starved customer …

So what’s available to ensure that your extensively researched look&feel, your brand, is consistent between your website, your newsletters, your HTML emails, and your ‘paper’ publications? You could depend on the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) font-family property (see font family, or w3school.com, or for a more general introduction: sitepoint), alternatively you might consider Google Fonts!

I’m currently mentoring a charity that require a non-standard layout for their new information newsletter. We’ve reviewed Litmus: Email client market share, and have compromised, for their first issue, on a standard font. They are non-profit Salesforce user, using Vertical Response as their email marketing App. (incidentally you don’t need to be a Salesforce user to use Vertical Response, you can use it as a standalone application … this is well worth considering if you’re a charity). However, for subsequent newsletters we’ll be using Google Fonts.

So what are Google Fonts? Google Fonts are “… high-quality web fonts that you can include in your pages …” With simple code (the Google Fonts API) in the HTML of your newsletter you’ll have significantly more control over the fonts your customer will view your newsletter in. Essentially, Google Fonts are downloaded from the Google Font Server when the newsletter is first read (technically: the fonts are saved in the email/browser cache so subsequent newsletters will be quicker … ).

Some example Google Fonts and their effects (Yes! Google Fonts work in WordPress!):

This is Cardo!

This is Tangerine!

This is Tangerine, with shadow!

To preview the currently available Google Fonts try here … So, no excuse now; move your Fonts to the Cloud!

Need more information? Do contact me.