HTML newsletters give you full control over layout and branding. Agencies in Malta often hand clients a coded template, and in-house developers at gaming or fintech companies frequently maintain their own. This page covers what to watch for when building or importing HTML for a Maltese audience.
Handle Maltese characters properly
Maltese uses letters that are not in basic ASCII: ċ, ġ, ħ, ż and their capitals Ċ, Ġ, Ħ, Ż, plus the digraphs għ and ie. Save your HTML as UTF-8 and declare it in the head with a meta charset tag. If you paste text from a word processor, check that “Għawdex” or “Ħal Għargħur” have not turned into question marks. Test subject lines too, because they are encoded separately from the body.
Layout rules that still matter
- Tables for structure: many email clients, especially desktop Outlook, still render table-based layouts more reliably than modern CSS grids.
- Inline CSS: some clients strip style blocks, so inline critical styles.
- Width around 600px for the main container, scaling down on mobile.
- Web-safe fonts as fallbacks, as custom fonts do not load everywhere.
Design for mobile and dark mode
With internet penetration at 93.5% in Malta (DataReportal, 2025) and most people online via phones, mobile rendering is essential. Use media queries to stack columns, and make buttons at least 44px tall. Many readers also use dark mode, which can invert colours. Mailpro’s page on dark mode shows how to keep logos and brand colours legible.
Accessibility
Add alt text to every image, in the same language as the email. Keep contrast high, use real text rather than text baked into images, and set the lang attribute (en or mt) so screen readers pronounce content correctly.
Importing into Mailpro
You can paste HTML directly, upload a file, or import from a URL. Once imported, edit in the WYSIWYG editor or the code view. Dynamic fields such as first name work in imported HTML too. For more technical detail, see our guide to HTML emails and the HTML email QA checklist.
Test before every send
Send test messages to the mail apps your audience actually uses: Gmail and Outlook on phones, Apple Mail on iPhones, and whatever webmail your B2B clients rely on. Check links, image loading with images blocked, and how the plain-text version reads. A five-minute test catches most problems before thousands of readers see them.
Compliance elements in the code
Malta’s S.L. 586.01 prohibits marketing emails that conceal the sender or lack a valid opt-out address. Make sure your template footer includes your business name, a contact address and an unsubscribe placeholder that Mailpro fills automatically. Don’t hide these in tiny grey text; it undermines trust and can draw complaints.
Prefer not to code?
Mailpro’s drag-and-drop builder and 600+ templates generate clean, responsive HTML for you. See creating newsletters in Malta or follow our step-by-step newsletter guide.