Issue #204 All About Email

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Hi, friend. 👋

Welcome to Issue #204 of All About Email!

Last week, my fifth guest author of the summer explored a topic I don’t know much about, but it is an excellent complement to email marketing and part of omnichannel marketing.

This week, I’m talking about SVGs, how to use them in emails and some things to be aware of.

Let’s go! 👇

A Quick Note

📢 Shout out to Des Brown for letting me know last week’s email (despite testing) was clipped in Gmail.

That doesn’t happen often to me, but after some debugging, it was related to the Carousel code I had in the email, and it was Outlook, of all things, that showed me where the problem lay.

🚨 Now here’s the thing, it could happen again this week, and if it does, friend, would you reply to this email and let me know?

SVG in Email

SVGs are scalable images with tiny sizes and can look beautiful in emails, "if" they work.

In the world of WordPress, I’ve helped plugin developers with their SVG logo image display issues in email, as SVG support in email is different from the web, which has almost universal support.

How Do We Fix This?

🧠 First, I recommend reading this excellent article on images from Parcel.

It covers more than SVGs but succinctly summarises the issue and a workaround.

However, we want to go into more detail. 👇

Enter Mark Robbins, who works at Parcel and runs Good Email Code.

Mark wrote this detailed article on SVG methods, which covers two methods.

Embedded SVG

With 40.48% support, for me, this is not the way to go, but Mark covers the following:

• Embedded SVG and Accessibility.

• Embedded SVG and Comcast workaround.

External SVG

With 92.86% support, this approach is the way to go, viewing SVG as more of an enhancement.

This method is excellent because:

• We can set a fallback image.

• We can add styles to the SVG.

• You can use less code and only load one image. **

(** You will need to read the article to understand why.)

Now The Fun Bit!

So, friend, what inbox provider are you opening this email in?

• Gmail - You’ll see my white logo on a purple background in JPG format.

• Apple Mail (and some others) - and you should see my purple logo on a white background in SVG format.

What do you see? 👇

Below is an image of code which generates the two different images above. 👇

What the code does:

• Gmail ignores SVG, so it uses the src (JPG).

• Clients that support srcset + SVG will prefer the SVG and render it crisply at any scale.

• Fixed width/height + height:auto; max-width:100% keeps it responsive and avoids layout jumps.

• It’s best practice to declare the pixel density (1x) when you’re using srcset. Some email clients are picky, and explicitly stating 1x makes sure they treat the SVG as a standard-resolution replacement instead of ignoring it.

Other Formats

Perhaps in a couple of years, we will be using WebP (88.1% support) or AVIF (56.1% support), but again, neither of those image formats will work with Gmail, so perhaps the humble PNG will make a comeback?

There’s also SVG for VML (but that's another story). 🤣

All About Email - Playlist 🎧

I listen to lots of music, particularly when I’m writing newsletters.

Each week, when I hit the publish button, I’ll share the track I am currently listening to and create the most eclectic email playlist you’ve probably ever heard.

Sponsorship Opportunities

🚨 If you’re interested in sponsoring the “All About Email” newsletter, you can find all the details in this Google Doc. I currently have “Classified” slots and a Main Sponsor slot available.

That’s It For This Week 👋

Next week, I have my final guest author of the summer, none other than Jay Oram!

Following on from a busy month for Jay after releasing some new tools, I’m stoked he’s still had time to drop some knowledge in my humble newsletter.

See you next week!

Email Marketing News & Tips

This week's excellent and insightful email news & tips:

• Email Deliverability Expert - Here’s why your next newsletter isn’t going to spam, lessons from Al Iverson. (HubSpot)

• Newsletter First Workflow - Why TIME Moved Their 2M+ Subscribers to beehiiv. (Beehiiv)

• An Exciting Future - After 85 updates, the HTML Email for Figma plugin is going to the next level! (Email Love)

• Fill Up On Emails - The most underrated way to learn email? Read emails. This and more in an interview with Jay Oram. (Nikki Elbaz)

• Rematch - Wrestling with engagement? Grappling with an open rate problem? (Alison Gootee)

• Well Played, Apple! - iOS 26 and the anger of the Unknown Senders. (Al Iverson)

• 🤯 What!! - That Nike GIF Was HOW Big? Let’s Talk Image File Sizes. (Email Love)

• Email Deliverability Rules - Follow the rules! (Word to the Wise)

• Ah…Dark Mode - Are your emails afraid of the dark? (Des Brown)

• Tabs, Tabs, Tabs - Promotions Tab vs. Primary Tab: What Email Marketers Need to Know. (Lauren Meyer)

• Inspiration - The Best 286 Black Friday Email Examples & Designs in 2025. (Really Good Emails)

• It’s Psychological - 0 to 11K Subscribers in 6 Months: Reverse Engineering My Own Growth. (Growth In Reverse)

• The EU AI Act - Impact on Email Marketers. (Email Expert)

• 🎉 Congratulations! - Still blogging about email after 24 years. Simply incredible! (Al Iverson)

If you have a question about this email or email marketing, reply, and I will answer you as soon as possible.

I hope you have a great week! 👋