Here’s the workaround!
You may have seen the recent change Google made that has impacted your emails: Gmail is stripping CSS from background images. This has thrown marketers and email developers for a loop – and Dyspatch has the workaround, and a solution for you. Google may eventually resolve this issue given its widespread impact, but this will patch you through until then.
Gmail is stripping CSS from background-images
So what’s happening? Gmail is the most commonly used email provider for many of our customers’ recipients, which makes this issue pesky and a high priority to resolve. Here’s what the issue looks like, in practice:
See the example below: on the left the image is behaving as expected, but on the right it’s being squished together!
Google is regularly rolling out updates to Gmail and this is likely part of a larger improvement that will eventually get resolved. We’ll keep you updated. In the meantime, here’s what you can do to guarantee that your styles don’t get stripped and your emails look perfect every time.
The workaround:
Since Gmail is specifically targeting background-images set by CSS, we can use the background attribute on a table to sneak past its radar. Even though we aren’t using CSS to set the background image, we are still able to control its properties using CSS with the style attribute on our td like in the example posted below.
Sample
Code simplified for demonstration purposes
The solution: Try Dyspatch
Dyspatch customers benefit from the failsafe of DML – the Dyspatch Markup Language – which validates the code before you preview.
The Dyspatch email builder ensures that folks who aren’t email HTML coding pros, or marketers who code on the side, can get the workaround. Want to know more? Connect with us for a custom demo today.
What’s next?
As of posting this article, Google has not yet released a patch or fix, which they may, given the wide impact of this issue. That said, we’re keeping an eye out to ensure we keep you up to date. If you have any questions or would like to chat with our Dyspatch Email Heroes about options to get a perfect email every time, contact us at hello@dyspatch.io.
Update as of 2:18PM PST
Breaking news! As we published this post today, we learned that Google is planning to roll out a phased fix for this issue. Stay tuned for more…
