Dark Mode. It’s been around for a little while now on certain apps, but as more people get tired of having their eyeballs burned out by the blue light from their phones, it has risen to a new level of prominence. You can only look at screens for so long before you think to yourself, “There has to be a way to do this without the migraines.”
Dark Mode is now expected by consumers, who have made the darkened screen with lighter colored fonts a part of their daily life, and incorporated the mode into their personalities. Facebook got it a while back, and then when they encountered a bug that took Dark Mode away from everyone for *a day*, social media was filled with users vowing never to use the service again. Yeah, it’s like that. Love for Dark Mode runs deep.
As the use of it becomes more prolific, what does that mean for you in terms of email marketing? You’re formatting your emails in a certain way with graphics and logos being put into use based on how the traditional email inbox looks, while your recipients may be looking at a different color scheme altogether. This can drastically change the look of your emails, and not in a good way. Let’s look at some tips on how to better navigate your marketing in the dark.
Not All Dark Modes Are Created Equal
While many of the major email clients support Dark Mode, there’s an unfortunate disconnect in how they’re supporting it, meaning you’re not getting the same Dark Mode across the board. Depending on which operating system the recipients of your emails are running, the colors are either being inverted, or a different process is being employed entirely.
Everyone decided to take this matter into their own hands, and now we’ve got to do a lot more testing to make sure our emails make visual sense across the board. This means running your tests, and seeing how the end result looks in multiple email clients.
Optimize Your Graphics
One common issue is black graphics being lost in the background. If your logo image file has a set background color and the logo is black, then it will appear unchanged while the background surrounding it flips to black, but in the event that the background of the image is transparent
(as the background on many .png graphics will be), then that black logo is going to blend in and blend in well. Even if it isn’t fully black, dark colors like navy are going to be far less readable than they would be on a white background. Consider adding a white outline to all your dark graphics, so that it’ll pop regardless of the effects of Dark Mode.
Test Test Test!
The most important thing you can do is testing. Testing your emails to see how they render under a variety of circumstances is going to be absolutely essential. Because of how different email services interpret dark mode, you have to test in all of them.
Apple and Yahoo dark mode may behave one way, while the dreaded Outlook 365 for Windows 10 flies in the face of all reason and logic. Is this daunting? Yes. Did you go into this thinking it would be a much simpler, more standardized process? Almost certainly. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case, and a little extra work will need to be done. Believe us when we say, this extra care is worth it in the end, when your emails come through looking fresh and crisp, no matter where your readers are receiving them.
