Being an email design isn't easy.
One moment, it is stretched across a wide desktop screen. Next, it has to accommodate itself in a mobile display. And then there's webmail-where even the most perfect design may fail to render properly. It's like trying to balance while juggling.
If you want your emails to reach the widest audience with the best possible content, they have to look great regardless of the device on which they are opened-desktop, mobile, tablet, or pigeon carrier (maybe not that last one!).
The email design has to do double the amount of work to make this happen. It's got to adapt and still look sharp, no matter how many times it is tried by different devices and email clients.
But what if you don't know what device your audience will use?
Then, a hybrid email design is a must.
Hybrid email design is very similar to responsive email design, except that it does not rely on media queries. It's a more advanced and effective approach to developing responsive email templates.
Hybrid coding lets you cater to your subscribers' whims, ensuring a great email experience regardless of how they interact with your emails.
So, what is a hybrid email design? What makes it a step ahead of responsive design, and how can it be used to create top-notch responsive email design templates? Let's answer all your questions.
What Is Hybrid Email Design?
A hybrid email design is a responsive email template design developed with minimal use of media queries and breakpoints.
Instead, the hybrid coding uses percentage-based widths for tables and images so that these elements expand and adjust to fill the screen.
The idea behind lesser reliance on CSS features like media queries, which are used to create responsive email template designs, is that the email template needs to function without depending on these features.
That's because some email clients might change or remove important parts of your email's code for security reasons or other issues, especially from the section. This often contains CSS and media queries for how the email should be displayed.
Hybrid or spongy coding helps you create mobile-friendly templates that still render and function well, even in email clients that do not support media queries. That means hybrid emails are compatible with a lot more email clients, browsers, and operating systems. You could feel confident knowing that your high-performance email templates will look just fine no matter what.
Nonetheless, go ahead and include media queries in your hybrid email design as an extra feature for the email clients that do support them. This way, your responsive email templates look even better on those clients while being functional for everyone else.
How Is Hybrid Email Design Different From Responsive Email Design?
The purpose of the hybrid email design is the same as that of the responsive email design-to adapt and fit the screen being used to view it. However, it does it in a way that addresses the responsive design's shortcomings, such as dependence on media queries.
Just like responsive email template design, the hybrid design uses a fluid style that allows elements to adjust their size according to the screen size.
However, in hybrid design, these fluid styles are applied automatically from the start. Meaning they adjust their size without special instructions or specific breakpoints.
This means that elements in a hybrid-designed email will always change size depending on where they are in the layout.
The email is constrained to a maximum width to prevent these elements from becoming too large and hard to read on big screens.
Having said that, hybrid email design can get tricky while creating complex layouts, like those with two, three, or four columns. There are methods to make these layouts work with a hybrid design, but they are often more difficult to set up and can break easily.
In contrast, traditional responsive email design makes it easier to control how different parts of your email look on various screen sizes by applying specific styles.
This approach is generally more reliable and easier to manage than trying to create complex layouts with hybrid coding. So, while hybrid design has its advantages, it can be more challenging for intricate email designs.
What are these benefits that make jumping through the extra hoops worthwhile?
Pros of Hybrid Email Designs
- Hybrid emails are designed to be compatible across various email clients and devices. ensuring that your subscribers have an excellent experience no matter how they open your emails.
- When your emails are easy to use on mobile, it can lead to higher engagement rates, improving your email deliverability.
- Hybrid emails scale smoothly across all screen sizes, eliminating the risk of display issues caused by missing specific breakpoints.
- With a hybrid email design, you have more freedom to create emails without worrying that email clients will change it.
- You can add dynamic content that updates for each subscriber, ensuring that personalized content is easy to see and interact with on mobile devices.
Steps to Create Responsive Email Design Template Using Hybrid Coding
With that in mind, let's look at the basic steps to create a hybrid email design.
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Set Up a Fluid Hybrid Table
A hybrid email design starts with creating a table that uses fluid percentage values instead of fixed pixel sizes. This is to ensure that the width of the table and images can automatically adapt according to the screen size.
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Add a Max-Width Limit
Percentage values are great for mobile-friendly designs. But in order for it to work on desktop screens, hybrid emails must limit the maximum width of their elements. Else, it can lead to emails that look too wide on desktop screens.
To fix this, add a CSS property called max-width to the table and images. It constrains how wide the elements can be, making them look good and readable on larger screens.
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Conditional Comments for Outlook Compatibility
Max-width will constrain your elements for all email clients except Microsoft Outlook. Outlook does not support this property, so your email layouts will appear broken, super stretched, and horrible to your Outlook users.
Use MSO conditional comments to mitigate this issue.
Think of MSO conditional comments as special instructions to implement unique styles or content for different versions of Outlook. They create hidden tables with fixed widths specifically for Outlook, ensuring the email content displays properly.
In other words, conditional comments are only recognized and applied by Outlook. Other email clients ignore the comment and do not apply the style.
Conclusion
Creating robust hybrid email designs takes learning, testing, and patience. But if your audience consists of a wide range of devices and email clients, then you must strike the right balance between responsive design and compatibility. Hybrid coding will help you do that and prepare you for future email client updates.