You
may have cracked getting your email delivered, getting your
email opened with successful subject lines but how about
ensuring the email is designed correctly?
Here
are some tips on designing HTML emails.
White
space, colours & formatting of text
Readers of your email will not read every word. Instead
they will scan your email looking for words that catch their
attention.
To assist
users try some of the following techniques:
-
Leave
plenty of white space between paragraphs. White space
will make it much easier to read.
-
Lists
and bullet points are a great way of displaying information
that contains several key points
-
Colours
and typefaces on keywords will enable readers to quickly
identify the topic and potential relevance of an email
Put
in your effort “above the fold.”
The top part of the email, also known as “above the
fold” will determine the success of the email campaign.
This is what all recipients will see when they open the
email and you will need to persuade them to click-thru to
the website or scroll further down the email.
To ensure
you get this area right take the following into account:
-
Your
main message should always be at the top
-
Keep
the top section brief and punchy and leave the detail
for further down the email or landing pages
-
While
mastheads are good for re-enforcing brand values make
sure they do not take up too much room.
-
As
the top of the email is so important try sending a few
different versions to samples of your list before sending
out the best performing version to the remainder of your
list
Adhere
to standards to ensure your email renders correctly
Designing
an email is completely different to designing a web page
from a technical perspective. Email clients are not as advanced
as displaying HTML as a browser such as Internet Explorer
is.
Here
are some tips:
-
Place
the CSS outside of the <Head> tags
-
Background
images do not display in many web-based email accounts
-
Special characters should be encoded as the HTML entity
(I.E £ not ‘£’)
-
Avoid
Flash and any scripts as these don’t tend to work
in email and can assist in getting your email campaign
blocked.
-
Do
not define the link colours within the <BODY> tags
as these get ignored
Width & Length of your email
Scrolling
makes the email difficult to read and therefore should be
kept to a minimum.
Restrict
the width of the email to 590-650 pixels. This should ensure
recipients do not have to scroll at all.
Additionally
it is best practice in long periods to link it to other
areas of the message from the top. This makes it easy to
navigate to their chosen point in the email.
Write
punchy copy
It is vital not to drone on in your email. Your recipient
has plenty of other messages in their inbox to get through
and they don’t have time to read every single word.
Sentences should be no more than 8-10 words long while paragraphs
should contain no more than 2-3 sentences.
These tips should help your design teams come up with a
winning design. However don’t just think it is design
that will make your email campaigns successful. You need
to backup a top design with relevant content for each and
every recipient to ensure your email marketing achieves
top results.
|
