Dark mode in email marketing: all you need to know!
Do you already know the concept of dark mode or dark mode? Dark mode is in fact taking over the inbox more and more. In various email clients, you see dark mode turned on more and more often. What exactly does this mean for your e-mail marketing? And what should you take into account? Read more about it in this blog post!
What is dark mode?
The Dark Mode is a special function for using your mobile phone in the dark. This mode darkens white, sharp surfaces. This makes your eyes less tired. It also reduces the battery consumption of your phone when this mode is enabled. The white, bright colours are converted into a mix of grey, black and other dark colours. The darker components in your email become slightly lighter. Thus, in this mode you often get an email with a dark background with light texts. Images are not automatically adjusted to the dark mode.
Why do you have to take this into account?
The dark mode causes the background of a newsletter to darken. This is quite inconvenient if you have not optimised your newsletter for it. Think of a black button in your newsletter without a border. Or an image with a white border just like that. Logos are often black or grey, just like icons. These icons or logos are difficult or impossible to see in the dark mode. This way it is possible that your customers get irritated. Your mail is unreadable or difficult to read. And that does not help the conversion. These colour changes can be seen in Outlook.com, Outlook 2019 on Mac and Windows, the Outlook apps on both iOS and Android, and the Gmail app on Android and iOS. The mode is not customisable, it is a matter of enabling or disabling it for the user.
What are the advantages of dark mode?
The advantages of the dark mode lie with the end user. The first benefit would be that it is good for your phone's battery. Your screen shows different dark shades instead of very bright, light colours. A second advantage is that it is less intensive on your eyes. You often read your email just before you go to sleep. Your eyes get tired and start to get used to a dark environment. Then a dark screen on your phone is also quite nice. A final advantage is that many people find the dark mode itself much nicer or more attractive. More and more people prefer this mode.
Examples of dark mode
Some email clients have the option for the mode, others do not. Below is a list of the clients that do have a dark mode function:
Mobile email clients:
- iPhone Mail
- iPad Mail
- Gmail App (Android)
- Gmail App (iOS)
- Outlook App (Android)
- Outlook App (iOS)
- Apple Mail
Desktop email clients:
- Outlook 2019 (Mac OS)
- Outlook 2019 (Windows)
Web email clients:
- Outlook.com
- Hey.com
Handy, such a list! You must know which clients your target group uses the most. Unfortunately, dark mode does not work the same for every client. If only it did! Then the life of an email marketer would be much easier. Email rendering is complex. An email that looks good in one client, might not look good in another. On top of that, email clients use different colour schemes for the dark mode. There are three colour schemes that are used.
- Dark interface - only the colour of the inbox changes. The colour of the inbox only changes with this option. Thus, the emails themselves remain the normal colour in their entirety. But the inbox on the left side becomes black. This has no impact on emails themselves.
- Partial dark mode. In a partial dark mode, the email is checked for a light background and/or dark text. If so, these colours are converted. Does your email already have dark areas? Then these colours will not be adjusted.
- Full dark mode. In this variant, all colours are reversed, so that emails with a dark background and a light text are given a light background with a dark text. The design is thus completely reversed.
Tips for working with the dark mode
It is important to test your email properly in different email clients. Only then will you know whether your email can be read properly in the dark mode in a certain client. Of course, there are points you can look out for anyway, such as:
- Add a white border around your dark content. This ensures that your content stands out in the dark mode. Otherwise your photo will blend in with the background. And that is not what you want.
- Do not use white texts in your emails. These cannot be read in the dark mode.
- Don't make your logo too dark. Otherwise your logo is no longer legible. With the contrast-ratio tool you can always see how your colour looks with another colour (e.g. when you switch between dark and light mode).
Now you know what dark mode is and how it affects the readability of your emails. Luckily Reloadify has an example view in the email editor, so you can easily see what your email will look like in dark mode. This way, your email can already be optimized in the editor! Very handy!
