Email campaigns can sometimes appear differently in Outlook compared to other email clients or when viewed in a web browser due to various reasons:
1. Rendering Differences: Outlook uses its own rendering engine to display HTML emails. It doesn’t always support modern web standards, resulting in differences in how elements like images, fonts, or layouts are displayed. Outlook often has limited support for CSS styles and HTML elements, causing discrepancies in the email's appearance.
2. Microsoft Word as Rendering Engine: In some versions, Outlook uses Microsoft Word to render HTML emails, which can lead to further inconsistencies as Word's rendering capabilities for HTML can be different from web browsers.
3. Image Blocking: Outlook might block images by default for security reasons. This can make your email look incomplete or different because certain elements are hidden until the user chooses to display images.
4. Font Rendering: Outlook may not support custom fonts or may default to its own set of fonts, causing variations in text appearance.
6. Version Differences: Different versions of Outlook might have varying levels of HTML and CSS support, resulting in different email renderings.
As Outlook uses Microsoft Word to render HTML, it occasionally adds extra space above an image. This happens because Outlook views emails on the screen the same as a print preview, indicating how the email might appear on a printed page. If an image falls between what Outlook perceives as two distinct pages for that section, it adds surplus space above the image to shift it to the subsequent page. Despite email being a single scrolling page, Outlook interprets sections of the email as if they are meant for separate printed sheets.
To remove this additional white space, reorganising your content becomes necessary. When rearranging your content, your goal is to identify where Outlook is inserting the page break in your content. If the space occurs above an image, attempt relocating the image elsewhere in your layout and send a test email to check if this resolves the issue. Keep reorganizing and testing your campaign until the excess white space is resolved.
Remember, despite these efforts, achieving perfect consistency across all email clients, including Outlook, can be challenging due to its specific rendering differences. Testing and optimising for the most commonly used email clients can help improve the overall consistency of your email campaigns.