How to add logo and style to all email templates

Alpha1

Well-known member
Has anyone found a solution to display style, logo and footer in transactional emails in a mobile friendly manner? I think this is quite an important one that will greatly improve deliverability of emails and thus forum success.


Agreed.

I did a template change a while ago but if baffles me this isn’t built in.

This one seems gone.
I'm using font-awesome icon + text logo and a style by PixelExit @Russ

@Matt C. @fords8 do you have idea's on this one?
 
The Amazon link only lists best practices about sending of mail, and doesn't mention images or styles at all. As long as it is clearly branded, and delivered directly from the entity subscribed to, even a text-only email is acceptable. And honestly, I prefer text-only over everything else.

But adding a logo/footer is not complicated. It's just a matter of editing the MAIL_CONTAINER template.

I will probably work with this to do something really low-key with our upcoming style upgrades. Likely very basic CSS and only one image. What would be a cool trick would be to detect which style the member is using, and send the email using that particular style. Buuuuut...that's above my pay grade. 😁

For what it's worth, I block all images in my emails, and allow images only from a very small number I am interested in. Otherwise, if it ends up being empty and full of broken images, then I toss it--if the sender can't provide simple text (to, you know, communicate, which is what email is actually made for), that's on them, not me. I get many of these, especially in my Promotions folder.

And I won't be "that site" which sends a ton of useless decoration with forum emails. It'll be a small logo, a couple of color hints with CSS, and the text. Simple and clean. 👍 And for those who block images, all they will miss is the logo.
 
What would be a cool trick would be to detect which style the member is using, and send the email using that particular style. Buuuuut...that's above my pay grade. 😁

Frankly I don't even think it's worth doing that, since XF hasn't done it. Email clients usually already darken or lighten the email contents based on the user's system theme, or let users choose what theme they want.
 
Added more to it. You don't want to go to crazy and make it super big. My understanding, Gmail likes under 80KB. I am not sure I would keep the heads up and left and right columns. I am just editing the MAIL_CONTAINER to do this.
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Is there a way to:
  • Add text logo with font awesome icon
  • Change color of 'View Direct Message' button.
  • Change Font
  • Add Background image.
  • Add social media font icons to the footer.
 
The Amazon link only lists best practices about sending of mail, and doesn't mention images or styles at all.
They have more such articles. According to SES support 'Branded' means styled in the same way as your website to a degree that a recipient recognizes the branding instantly. This includes colors, font, logo. They noted a discrepancy between the branding/styling of transactional emails and activity summary. They need to be styled the same way so its recognizable to avoid a significant number of complaints / marked as spam. It only takes a fraction of a percent of complaints to reduce reputation and deliverability. At 0.1% SES will freeze your account. I have hundreds of thousands of users, so it quickly racks up if a small percentage doesn't recognize immediately email and marks transactional xenforo email as spam.

Its something I need to resolve before they will unfreeze email functionality. They specifically listed styling as a condition to unfreeze.
They also recommended to add social media links to footer and to brand header, body and signature/footer.
 
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