Email Not Displaying Correctly in Gmail: Fix Custom Font Fallback Overrides for Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) for Deliverability & Spam Audits
Spam filters analyze email HTML code quality alongside body copy. Unclosed tags, excessive styling block nesting, and broken link parameters are flagged as spam risks. Below is the targeted integration guide to fix Custom Font Fallback Overrides inside Gmail App (iOS & Android) templates when using Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC).
Technical Breakdown
Gmail App (iOS & Android) uses the WebKit / Blink which lacks support for standard rendering rules. This causes Custom Font Fallback Overrides elements to break or collapse when rendering templates.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) Behaviors
SFMC's Content Builder wraps block exports in div frames that can break conditional comments. Additionally, AMPScript calls for personalizations can trigger parsing errors if they are inside MSO conditional comments. Ensure your AMPScript tags are evaluated *outside* the VML blocks. Run your finished layouts through the Spam Word Auditor to catch trigger phrases and verify structural delivery alignments before launching.
Remediation Code Block
To prevent Outlook's Times New Roman fallback override, wrap your custom font declarations inside an @media block that Outlook ignores, or use MSO conditional statements to override font-families specifically for Microsoft Word rendering engines. In your Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC) campaign manager, make sure you configure your links to run via %%unsubscribe_url%%.
<!--[if mso]>
<style type="text/css">
body, table, td { font-family: Arial, sans-serif !important; }
</style>
<![endif]-->
<style>
@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Montserrat&display=swap');
</style>Live Code Sandbox Test
How to Deploy inside Salesforce Marketing Cloud (SFMC)
Copy the fixed VML or table wrapper code block from the remediation box above.
Create an 'HTML content' layout block in Content Builder. Paste the table structure. Enclose any custom merge tags inside standard AMPscript wrapper lines.