The European Union's privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), came into force on May 25, 2018. At the time, many wondered what GDPR meant for email marketers. And luckily, the GDPR didn't kill email as the doomsayers predicted. But one thing that might still give you headaches? How to collect and store email consent. GDPR raises the bar to a higher level of consent for subscribers based in the European Union (EU), which means that the way you collected consent from EU subscribers in the past may no longer be valid. compliant. And even now that the UK (UK) has officially left the EU, the GDPR post-Brexit hasn't changed too much . The UK has created its own UK GDPR, which is essentially the same as the EU GDPR, except that it only applies to UK residents. Details are covered in the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) Guide to the UK GDPR. For the sake of simplicity, I'll refer to both simply as GDPR, unless I'm referring to one specifically. So the real question is, what does Image Masking Service this all mean for email consent for your EU and UK subscribers? How to Keep Email Consent GDPR Compliant The GDPR requires brands to collect affirmative consent that is “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous” to be compliant. The ICO has also provided a comprehensive guide to consent under the GDPR. If you're not ready to dive into the full 39-page guide just yet, here's a breakdown of the five most important things you need to know about email consent under GDPR, with plenty of examples from the how we implement them here at Litmus. 1. Obtain consent from a positive opt-in, not pre-checked boxes Opt-in Email GDPR For consent to be valid under the GDPR, a customer must actively confirm their consent, for example by checking an unchecked opt-in box. Pre-checked boxes that assume consent if people do n't uncheck them are not valid under the GDPR. Recital 32: “Silence, pre-ticked boxes or inactivity shall not constitute consent. »

Before we knew that image-only emails weren't the best way to produce email campaigns, we did. At the time, a popular method of creating emails started with slicing in Photoshop , anyone?), exporting the HTML code, and working from there. However, as we learned and evolved over time, we discovered that this was not the best method. In 2012, 90 million Americans used email on a mobile device. With the rise of mobile, we figured out how to work smarter. In this example from McDonald's in 2014, we see how they implemented some best practice techniques with alt text and background color, keeping the subscriber experience front and center. Here's a side-by-side comparison to show enabled vs. disabled images. McDonald's Source: Email Design Review | ActionRocket The dominant theme: simplicity Although we see all of these things in emails today, they are more subtle and simpler than they were back then. In a nutshell, Lily explains that emails now have “much cleaner design, streamlined layouts with much less clutter, and larger fonts. Readability is now better taken into account. Overall, emails E-Commerce Photo Editing Service of the past tended to have a lot going on compared to the emails we see today. Working with cluttered layouts (legend boxes and navigation bars) just got a whole lot easier. It's nice to reminisce Remembering our past can make us aware of how much we have changed. And change is good, it's a sign that we are growing and evolving! Thank goodness email always changes , right? What comes to mind when Lily and Brian think of the 2010s? “I'm a fan of the evolution of email, I definitely live in the present/future and don't look back. " lily setlily set “While I miss the simplicity of having fewer email clients to manage, I do miss the amount of testing that was required before Litmus. Being able to make small code changes and see the results on all email clients at once was a huge time saver. Brian ThiesBrian Thies Make sure your emails are perfect for change Email is constantly evolving, with over 15,000 different potential renderers, and counting. Make sure your emails are perfect for change. Protect your brand reputation in every email send by ensuring every send is on-brand and error-free in any inbox. Start your free trial →

The <body> tag is removed in Yahoo and AOL, so any background color applied to it will not appear in those email clients. And placing a color on a wrapping <div> after the body would work everywhere except in Outlook clients, as they don't support <div> tags in emails. For the widest range of email customer support, wrap your entire email in a 100% width <table> tag and place your background color inside. And use <td> table cells for sections of your email to have more flexibility in coloring specific blocks of content. 2. Add color with CSS property and HEX color codes or RGB values Background colors can be coded in several ways: Using the bgcolor HTML attribute Using the CSS background-color property Using CSS shorthand property background Using the 6-digit hexadecimal color code Using the 3-digit hexadecimal color code Working with RGB color values As for how to put the background color on your table or table cell, you need to use a CSS property. When testing the two CSS property methods (background-color and background), we found that they both have the same consistent results as long as you only add color (no images). According to caniemail.com, using the background property for anything other than adding a color can cause your color to not display. The bgcolor HTML attribute did not work E-Commerce Photo Editing Service well in Outlook, with inconsistent support for 3-digit HEX codes. And using RGB and RGBA values ​​resulted in incorrect color or complete color removal. Here's our background color test using Outlook's different methods so you can see for yourself: Litmus test of background color rendering in HTML emails in Outlook See this test in Litmus → In other email clients, the 3-digit . HEX code was displayed fine, but RGB and RGBA values ​​resulted in incorrect colors when applied to the bgcolor HTML attribute. Litmus test of background color rendering in HTML emails in Apple Mail See this test in Litmus → After all our tests, we came to one conclusion: respect the CSS properties and use 3 or 6 digit HEX codes or RGB values. These worked on all email clients. Introducing opacity with the alpha for the RGBA value was not supported in Outlook, Web.de or GMX.de, but had decent support otherwise. So your final code should look like this to color the entire background of a table: