What to remember about when designing a password reset email?
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Send the email from the domain of the application or service whose password is being reset.
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Make it obvious from the sender name and the subject line who the message is from, and that it contains instructions for resetting a password.
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Design the email in HTML rather than plain text. HTML emails simply look better, and even though this isn’t a marketing email, it should still look decent and present the instructions clearly.
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Write good HTML that holds up across the various email clients, so the message displays correctly in every inbox. What looks good in Gmail doesn’t necessarily look good in Outlook, which is why it’s worth testing the message in different email clients.
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Optimize the email for phone screens. Most users will open it on a mobile device.
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Give the password reset link an expiration date. Twenty-four hours is the most common one, and after that the user has to click ‘reset password’ again. Remember to deactivate the link once somebody has used it to set a new password.
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Make the instructions for setting a new password clear. The user shouldn’t be left with any doubts about the steps or about what happens at the end.
What to include in a password reset email?
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A brief note about why the email arrived, for example “You have recently requested to reset the password to your account.”
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A clear explanation of how to set a new password, together with a reset link or button. That link or button is the most important element in the email, so it belongs in a central position.
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The expiry time of the password reset link.
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Contact details for the support team, in case the user runs into problems setting the new password.
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Extra information, like the IP address of the computer the password reset was requested from.
Password reset email template
There are a few rules a password reset email needs to follow, and a few elements it can’t do without. If you want to be sure they’re all in the right place and the information is clear to the recipient, have a look at Tabler Emails. It’s a set of over 80 templates, and a password reset email is one of them. They’re fully customizable and mobile-optimized, so what lands in the inbox is clear to the user.
