Going all out with your email marketing campaign can be easy to do. You’ve secured some email marketing software, you have an amazing vision and you have a recipient list or target audience.
So, you whip up a snazzy series of emails and send them off! But, your hard work is met with months of lackluster response, or even none at all? Where did things go wrong?
Perhaps your snazzy design was a bit too — snazzy. You wanted to catch the recipient’s eye, but you may have gone a little too far. If you aren’t sure how much is too much, check out these design tips to make your emails have just that right amount of pizzazz.
What to Do
1) Do: Make Your Design Eye Catching
First things first, people don’t want to read a text only email about your business. That’s not going to catch anyone’s eye. Give your design a bit of flair. Keep your text to image ratio balanced. The images should complement your text. Using a pre-set table included with most email marketing software will make your email layout easy on the eye, yet enticing.
2) Do: Keep Your Design Simple
One in three people are utilizing mobile email now, more than ever. That means they are likely to read their emails from a smartphone or other mobile device like a tablet. An overcomplicated design will be a lot for even the best of smartphones to handle, and will probably discourage recipients from opening them, even on a laptop or tablet. Use web-safe fonts and plain text for your emails to avoid rendering and formatting issues down the road. Always test your design before sending it out and add simple social media interaction tags near the bottom to encourage people to check you out elsewhere.
3) Do: Make Your Design Consistent
Try to keep your design consistent with your social media sites, company website or other digital materials. Consistency always looks professional, well planned and expensive!
What Not to Do
1) Don’t: Go Overboard
No one wants to open an email from a smartphone and spend the next five minutes waiting for it to load. Don’t garnish the top of your emails with flashy pictures, graphics and web navigation. Avoid difficult fonts, long phrases or confusing wording. You want to catch the customer’s eye, but you don’t to scare them away. Less is always more.
2) Don’t: Make Your Design Too Complex
You are sending out emails for a specific purpose, and recipients should, easily find that purpose, or call to action. Within a few seconds of opening your email, someone should be able to recognize the call to action and — well — act on it. You don’t have much time and space to sell people on your product, so you’ll need to convince them sooner rather than later that this email is worth their time. Avoid web-navigation, too many pictures or a complicated interactive show. Get right down to the point and keep your design as streamlined as possible.
3) Don’t: Rely Only on Graphics
If you plan to incorporate your call to action, or main text within a graphic — don’t. If the graphic doesn’t load for some reason, then the entire purpose of your email is lost. Use graphics to complement your text, but don’t rely on them, or you risk losing everything.
Final Words
With these tips, you should be on the right track for a successful email marketing campaign. Just remember that simplicity is your friend. Everyone that opens your emails will thank you.
Guest Post by Megan:
Megan Brown is a social media networker at Slingshot SEO. In her spare time, she enjoys cycling, blogging, volunteering, and hanging out with her furry sidekick, her yorkie Alexa. Follow her on twitter (@thatgirlmegan) or check out her blog: www.thatgirlmegan.com
