Email Functions And Design

Most people don’t think about the Email functions and design ideas that go into creating a successful high-converting email campaign. “Designing” an email is one of those things that will help improve your email’s messaging and performance. More than just something to make your email “pretty,” design helps you communicate your message quickly and easily.

Good design helps deliver your message and drive conversion with less friction. Design can also offer your recipients a consistent experience and lets you take advantage of branding recognition. Great content matters, but so does design. This is especially true where it really counts: when someone is reading your email on a mobile device.

With more than 54% of users reading email on their smartphones, design counts more than ever. Email needs to be consistent across all platforms, and look great while conveying your message.

Best Practices For Email Functions and Design

Start with these:

• Pick a primary goal—what do you want the reader to do? Ideally, there should be just one goal in this email. Whether it’s downloading a white paper, subscribing to a blog or anything else, you should articulate this goal clearly and quickly. (Note: opens and clicks are not goals, just metrics.) Multiple choice of actions can confuse the reader, or stop them from taking any action at all. Unless you’re sending a newsletter, keep it at one goal and one click.
• Write and design the copy—this is your pitch, so offer them value here. Tell your reader why he or she should take this action and click through. Add formatting, white space, headlines and other design elements to make it easier to read and understand quickly.
• Avoid the “wall of text.” A large block of copy is a big turn-off to any reader on a mobile. It’s difficult to read, and looks like a book to them. Formatting breaks up your copy and makes it easier to digest in small bits.
• Create a consistent experience—your readers should be able to see the same thing no matter where they are reading your email. In theory, they should—but with more emails being read on smartphones, an email may or may not look the same across different mail apps. Design for the mobile screen, using less but more powerful wording, consistent in the email and on the landing page.

The Inverted Pyramid For Email

This modified version of the Pyramid explains designing and writing an email for any platform.

Structure the email in this fashion (including an image as needed) and keep the white space in and around your copy. Put the most important part of the content first, add some less-important info, then a CTA button to click. This short-and-sweet format helps keep the focus on your message, and leads them to the CTA without long, distracting copy that’s hard to read on mobile.

Use a minimum of a 14-point font that’s visible on both types of email clients. Finding the visible CTA button (minimum: 44 pixels square) at the bottom allows them to click on it right away. With short, strong copy for your CTA, you’re ready to go.

You can also ensure readability by using a mobile-friendly template with a single-column layout. Most email providers offer pre-approved templates that automatically re-size text for each platform. You can concentrate on your copy and not worry as much about your design.

Across Clients

Using images can be a great idea, or cause a lot of problems. With so many different email clients available, an email that looks perfect in Outlook may look completely different in the Gmail web page, or on mobile. Use these guidelines to design your email:

• Always provide an external link in your email, so that the reader can click to a web browser version if their email client mangles it.
• Keep your emails under 600 pixels to ensure that they “fit.” Anything over that may not work.
• Use a table-structured positioning of elements, which are universally accepted.
• Add alt text to your email. Some email clients automatically block images, so having alt text ensures that your message will get through.
• Make sure that your email message makes sense without any images.
• Don’t create your email as an image. If a client doesn’t allow images, your message will be lost and possibly tossed into the spam folder.
• Avoid using background images for the same reason.

Testing

Again, testing is always important before you send your email. Send yourself a test message, proofread it, and review it on a PC email client as well as a smartphone to ensure readability for the recipient. Once you’re satisfied that it will work on multiple email clients, you’re ready to send it out.

Conclusion

Email functions and design doesn’t have to be difficult. But it is important to your reader, your message and your brand. Spend a little extra time on the email design. See how the copy, image, CTA and other pieces fit together to offer value to the reader but doesn’t waste their time getting there. Ensure that the email and any images are properly structured, and you’ll increase your chances of your message being seen and opened.

Need help improving your email functions and design performance? Just give us a call at 5402595001 for a free consultation. Contact us today and to find out how we can raise your company’s online profile, and help you get more customers. You can also message us on Facebook.

Other articles about Email Marketing: Email Marketing Pro, Lifecycle Marketing, Contact Management Segmentation, Email Functions and Design, Email eMarketing Essentials, Email Lead Developer

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