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ContactMonkey allows you to use your organization's proprietary fonts in email templates for consistent brand identity. This feature requires setup by your team and coordination with your IT department.

Before You Upload a Custom Font

Custom fonts have significant technical limitations that affect how recipients see your emails. Review these requirements carefully before proceeding:

Email Client Compatibility

• Gmail: Does not support custom or web fonts. Only displays standard fonts like Google Sans and Roboto
• Outlook 2007-2016: Does not retrieve fonts from the web. Custom fonts only display if physically installed on the recipient's computer
• Mobile devices: May not display custom fonts unless the font is pre-installed on the device

What This Means for Your Emails

Because of these limitations, most recipients will see your fallback font instead of your custom font.

Check these requirements before you upload:

If your font is in .otf, .woff or .woff2 format, convert it to .ttf first, or ask your design team for the .ttf version.

Choosing Your Fonts: Recommended Limits

For consistent email branding, keep your font choices minimal:

• Font families: 1 maximum. Use one primary typeface for all text. 
• Font weights: 2–3. Typically, a regular (400) for body text, a bold (600 or 700) for emphasis and headings, and optionally a medium (500) or light (300) if your hierarchy needs it.

Why These Constraints Matter 

Using more than two fonts or three weights often leads to several branding "sins":

• Visual noise: Too many styles compete for the reader's attention, making the call to action harder to find
• Rendering issues: Outlook is notorious for reverting to Times New Roman if it gets confused by complex font stacks
• Load speed: Each weight is a separate file download. If an email takes more than 2 seconds to render, users often delete it.

The underlying principle: fewer, intentional choices read as more polished and professional than a wider variety.

What You'll Need

From Your IT Team:

1. Font file in .ttf format
2. The regular weight version of the font
3. Confirmation that all users (senders and recipients) have full licensing rights
4. A fallback font selection (standard web-safe font that displays when the custom font doesn't render)

   1. One fallback font applies to all of your brand fonts. You can choose from Arial, Courier, Georgia, Helvetica, Lucida Sans, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS or Verdana.

Tip: Choose a fallback font that closely matches your custom font's style and weight for the most consistent appearance.

How to Upload a Brand Font

For Admins and Owners only.

1. Go to Settings > Branding.
2. On the Brand Fonts card, click Manage.
3. Drag your .ttf files into the upload area, or click Select or drop files here. You can add several files at once.
4. Check My company owns the license to upload and use this font.
5. Click Install Font (or Install Fonts for several files). Each font appears under Installed fonts, shown in its own typeface.
6. Under Fallback font, choose a standard font to show when a recipient's device can't display your brand font. This is required once you have at least one font installed.
7. Click Save.

The font's name comes from inside the font file, not from the file name. For example, a file called brand-sans-final.ttf may appear as "Brand Sans".

What is a Fallback Font?

A fallback font is a backup font. Some email apps and devices can’t display custom fonts, so when that happens, your email automatically shows the fallback font instead. This keeps your emails looking clean and consistent for every recipient.

Which Fallback Font Should I Choose?

Pick a font with a style similar to your custom font so the switch is barely noticeable.

If your custom font is sans-serif (clean, without the small decorative strokes at the ends of letters):

• Arial or Helvetica — the safest choice, available on almost every device.
• Segoe UI — a good fit if most of your team uses Windows and Outlook.
• Verdana — slightly wider and very easy to read on screens.

If your custom font is serif (with small decorative strokes, like a traditional book font):

• Georgia — designed for screens and widely available.
• Times New Roman — a classic installed on almost every device.

You’re not limited to these. Any commonly installed font can work as a fallback, so suggest another if you have one in mind.

Manage your fonts

• Delete a font: in Brand Fonts > Manage, click the trash icon next to the font, then Delete. The font is removed from the Email Builder font menu for your whole team. 
  • If it was your default text or survey font, the default resets to Arial. Existing templates that use the deleted font will display your fallback font instead.
• Rename a font: fonts can't be renamed in ContactMonkey, because the name is read from the font file. 
  • To change the name, edit the file's font family name in a font tool and upload it again.
• Change the fallback font: in Brand Fonts > Manage, pick a different option under Fallback font and click Save. 
  • One fallback font applies to all of your brand fonts. You can choose from Arial, Courier, Georgia, Helvetica, Lucida Sans, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS or Verdana.
• Fonts added by ContactMonkey Support: if Support set up fonts for your account earlier, they appear under Added by ContactMonkey Support. You can use them like any other font, but only Support can remove them. Contact support@contactmonkey.com to make changes.

Troubleshooting

Custom font not displaying in your browser while building templates? Download the .otf version of the font file to your local device. This typically resolves browser rendering issues during the email creation process.

Can I upload Google Fonts? Common Google Fonts such as Lato, Open Sans, Roboto and Montserrat are already available in the Email Builder. To use another one, download its .ttf file and upload it.

Do brand fonts work in SMS? No. SMS messages are plain text, so the recipient's phone always uses its own font.

Need more help? Contact support@contactmonkey.com.