How to Use a Custom Font in Your Emails

Applying a custom font should be done in your email layout and not in each individual email message. This makes it easier for you to change the custom font for all your email messages in the future as needed.

Please note that Gmail doesn't support web fonts unfortunately (including Google Fonts weirdly enough).

Email clients that do support web fonts include Apple Mail, iOS Mail, Android Mail (not Gmail), Thunderbird, and Outlook for macOS. This means you’ll have the best luck with web fonts if your users are using Apple devices.

To get the most comprehensive support for the font you're using across different email clients, you'll want to use a web-safe font instead that looks closest to what you were intending to use. For example, you can use Georgia, Garamond or Times New Roman for a serif font, and Arial, Verdana or Tahoma for a sans-serif font.

If you're using a web font in you email layout, and the user's email client doesn't support it, the font will default to either serif or san-serif depending on the web font's typography (ie. if it's a serif type web font, then its fallback font is serif).

To do this:

1

From your project dashboard sidebar menu, navigate to Email > Layouts.

2

Prefinery has template Starter Layouts that you can use right away by simply editing any of them (doing so will automatically create a new copy of that template layout for you). Alternatively, you can create a new layout from scratch by clicking the Add a Layout button on the top-right corner, or by cloning any of the layouts you've created already. Also, you can just simply edit any of your existing layouts if you've been using one already.

3

In the layout editor, click on the Body tab, then under GENERAL > Font Family choose the font you'd like to use for your email layout.

If you cannot see the editor tabs, just click on X to exit editing the currently selected content block, or simply click on a blank area anywhere on the layout preview.

4

Don't forget to give your layout an easily identifiable name if you haven't yet, hit Save then Close if you're done making all the needed changes with your email layout.

Now you're ready to use the layout with the new custom font on your emails.

If you were editing an existing layout which you've already set for your email messages (process described in the remaining steps), the custom font change is automatically applied so you can stop here.

5

Navigate to Email > Messages, and click on the Actions button for the corresponding email message you'd like to use the updated layout on, and select Edit.

6

In the Email Message editor, click on the Settings tab, then on the Layout dropdown select the new layout you've created. Click on the Save button when done.

You can preview how the email message looks with the custom font by clicking the Content tab and then Preview.

7

Repeat steps 5 & 6 for other email messages as needed.