When you send an email campaign, how it appears in your recipient’s inbox depends a lot on which email client they’re using. Whether it’s Gmail, Outlook, or Apple Mail, each one has its quirks in how it renders HTML, supports features like AMP, and even handles interactivity.
If you're running advanced campaigns, especially with dynamic content or AMP blocks, knowing which email clients your recipients are actually using becomes essential. It lets you avoid rendering issues, personalize content better, and make smarter design decisions.
We’ll discuss how you can check the data about which email clients your recipients are using and how you can use this data to optimize your email campaigns.
Why email client data matters to marketers
Not all email clients are built the same and marketers get that. If you’re not designing with that in mind, you could be losing clicks before the email even has a chance to make its case.
Here’s why knowing your recipients’ email clients matters:
- Design compatibility: Some clients, like Outlook, don’t fully support modern HTML/CSS, which can break your design.
- AMP support: AMP emails work in clients like Gmail, but not in Apple Mail or Outlook, so knowing your audience’s breakdown helps you choose the right format.
- Fallback planning: If most of your opens come from clients that don’t support AMP emails, you can plan better fallbacks.
- Incorrect analytics: Apple Mail loads every email that lands in the inbox of the users, whether or not it’s actually opened by them. This renders every email to be counted in opened emails, thereby bloating the actual open rates.
How to check email client insights
With Mailmodo, every campaign you send comes with detailed analytics, including insights into which email clients are being used by your subscribers to open the email campaign.
You’ll be able to see a breakdown like:
- Gmail: 60%
- Apple Mail: 25%
- Outlook: 10%
- Others: 5%
This gives you immediate visibility into where your design needs to be most compatible. You can view this data by following the steps below:
Step 1: Visit the campaigns tab from the left panel.
Step 2: From the list of campaigns that you’ve sent, choose the campaign you want to see email clients' related insights for.
Step 3: In the campaign dashboard, scroll down to find the Top email clients section that shows the required data.
What do you do once you’ve gathered email client data
Once you’ve gathered the data, here are a few things for you to do:
Prioritize your design strategy: If Gmail dominates, it makes sense to include AMP or interactive features. If Outlook is common, opt for more static, compatibility-first layouts.
Adapt your fallback planning: Make sure fallback content is optimized for the least capable clients.
Drive design QA testing: Focus testing efforts on the clients that constitute the biggest chunk of your audience.
Final thoughts
Email design isn’t one-size-fits-all, and that’s why knowing your audience’s email clients matters so much. If you’re aiming to improve performance and deliver better inbox experiences, this is one data point you can’t afford to ignore.
So, start tracking the right data on Mailmodo, identify the email clients that constitute the biggest chunk of your email audience and set your priorities right.
