Introduction
Readability is a fundamental criterion in email design. A poorly adapted text size, too small or too large, can harm the user experience and reduce the message's impact, or even affect the message's accessibility and/or deliverability.
Recommended text sizes
In the world of email marketing, it's essential to ensure that texts are comfortable to read on all media, especially mobile. Here are the recommended sizes:
- Body text: minimum 12 px
- Headings: between 20 px and 28 px, depending on the level of hierarchy
Too-small text makes reading painful, especially on mobile. Conversely, text that's too large can disorganize the visual hierarchy and lead to display bugs in some mail clients such as unwanted line breaks.
Legal notices
Regulatory elements such as unsubscribe notices and phrases, the sender's address or legal information should remain visible, without taking over the rest of the content.
It's common to come across texts with sizes <12px, nevertheless the recommended size remains between 12px and 13px, with sufficient contrast (for example: dark gray on a light background) to ensure good content accessibility.
Good practices
- Test rendering on different email clients: Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, etc.
- Maintain a clear hierarchy between headings, subheadings and paragraphs.
- Check that reading remains fluid without zooming, especially on mobile.
Conclusion
Using appropriate text sizes is essential to guarantee a good user experience and improve the accessibility of your campaigns. A well-structured email, with legible text, contributes directly to the performance of your messages.