Definition
Text-only mode is how your email appears when the HTML version is not displayed. Some recipients deliberately set their email client to plain text. Others have HTML rendering disabled for security reasons. Screen readers may also default to text-only interpretation.
Why It Matters
A poorly rendered text-only version can break the user experience for a small but significant portion of recipients. Ensuring a clean text fallback improves accessibility, deliverability (spam filters read the text version), and overall subscriber experience.
Best Practices
- Links are visible as full URLs, not just anchor text
- Important information is not conveyed only through images
- The content flows logically without HTML table structure
- Start with the fundamentals of Text-Only Mode (Email) and build from a clear baseline, so later improvements are measurable rather than assumed.
- Keep Text-Only Mode (Email) consistent with how the rest of your email programme works, so no single initiative works against another.
- Review how Text-Only Mode (Email) is handled in your own data and adjust from what you see, rather than copying what another brand does.
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Related Glossary Terms
Above the Fold in Email
Above the fold in email refers to the content visible to a recipient before they scroll, a critical area for first impressions and primary calls to action.
Accessible CTA (Email)
An accessible CTA is a button or link coded with sufficient colour contrast, visible focus states, descriptive screen-reader text, and a minimum touch target of 44×44 pixels.
Adaptive Design
Adaptive design in email uses predefined layouts that adjust to specific device or client widths, rather than fluidly resizing to every possible screen.
AI-Generated Content in Email
AI-generated content in email is copy, images, code or subject lines produced by artificial intelligence tools to speed up campaign production and testing.
Alt Text
Alt text is the written alternative to an image in an email, displayed when images are blocked, slow to load, or consumed by screen readers.
AMP for Email
AMP for Email is a technology that allows interactive, dynamic content to live inside an email message, enabling forms, carousels and live updates.
Frequently Asked Questions
Good practice here means handling Text-Only Mode (Email) in a way that is relevant, timely, and honest for your audience. Text-only mode refers to how an email renders when HTML is stripped by the email client, either due to user preference, security restrictions, or accessibility needs. Done well, it improves engagement and builds trust; done poorly, it creates friction that costs you results.
Because it touches the parts of email that drive outcomes: relevance, trust, and delivery. Small improvements compound, while repeated mistakes quietly erode the health of your programme.
The most common problems are treating Text-Only Mode (Email) as a one-off task, ignoring what the data says, and copying competitors without testing. All three lead to effort that does not translate into better results.
Compare the metrics it should influence — engagement, conversions, and deliverability — before and after you make changes. Trends over time matter far more than any single send.
It supports the same goal as the rest of your email programme: the right message to the right person at the right time. Aligned with segmentation and automation, it reinforces everything else rather than competing with it.