Why forwarded emails look different from the original?

It feels very natural to forward your email, right? After all, you have the forward option on every email client, regardless of whether the email is personal or a marketing email. 

Unfortionalty, forwarding an email could cause all kinds of issues.  

When an email is forwarded, the responsibility falls in the hands of the email client for the HTML rendering. 

In our example, the email clients are changing how the buttons look when we start to forward the email. This is a simple 2 column module, and it is supposed to look like this: 

Email clients such as Outlook sometimes may not render the HTML correctly, a generally known issue in email marketing. So, when the email is forwarded to Outlook it may look like this:

If it's forwarded to Yahoo, the email could look like this:

If it's forwarded to Gmail, the email could look like this:

So what happens is different email clients render the email differently. The email clients can adjust the email code, and these adjustments then remain part of the email. These changes may not be well received on another email client when forwarded. And this is what causes rendering issues.

In many cases, if you continue to forward the email many times the email can become unrecognizable like this:

These rendering issues include removing some HTML elements, adding extra spaces or lines in the code, or even wrapping your email in a blockquote. All of this can break the email and send a less functional forwarded email to the recipient. 

Some older templates in Loopify have been created with a "hide" functionality (like hiding a button). However, some email clients do not respect this when the email is forwarded a few times. If you experience this, update the template with a new version. Or get in touch at support@loopify.com, we'll be happy to help.

How to send an email for review?

Avoid forwarding emails because issues that don't really exist will appear differently for every email client. 

The bad news is that there isn't much that can be done to avoid design changes when an email is forwarded. 

The good news is that forwarding is not the only way to preview your email. In Loopify, you can send an email preview to you, your colleague, or your quality assurance.