09/09/2009
By Kev Charlton, head of innovation for fuse8
Email marketing is becoming more prolific, not just because it’s a highly effective and sharply focused way to reach your target audiences, but also because its inherent cost efficiencies are proving very appealing in the current financial climate.
So, with the prospect of so many people piling on to the e-bandwagon, how do you ensure that your email campaign stands out from the crowd, gains good open rates and doesn’t just find itself the victim of the delete key?
Here, Kev Charlton, fuse8's online designer, gives his tips on how to design email campaigns that create maximum impact.
People are becoming increasingly savvy to email marketing and won’t open just any email that lands in their inbox. According to recent research, the typical email recipient receives an average of 34 emails per day and has a limited attention span. Standing out from the crowd is therefore crucial and high impact design can achieve this by instantly connecting with the user.
This means marketers need to be increasingly clever about the design and messages in their emails to ensure that, firstly, they are opened and, secondly, that they engage the recipient enough for them to respond to the email’s call to action, whether that is calling a phone number or clicking through to find out more.
What to do
A strong subject line
One of the most crucial parts of an effective email campaign is the subject line, as it is the first thing the recipients see and so can be the difference between whether or not your campaign is opened in the first place. The subject line must be compelling but not cryptic, to give the recipient an initial idea of the email’s content that entices them to open it.
fuse8 carries out regular research in this area to establish trends and best practices for creating proven and effective subject lines.
Positioning of key elements
A large majority of recipients read emails via the preview pane, which just displays the top section of the email. It’s therefore essential that the user can easily grasp the meaning of the campaign just by viewing this section of the design. So, when we’re structuring the design we ensure that all the crucial elements are within this area and that it contains a strong call to action. This increases the chances of engaging the user and encourages them to open and read.
A strong call to action
Once the recipient has opened the email, the call to action is vital in persuading them to take the next step in the chain of events leading to an eventual sale, download, registration or ad impression. For example, if the action is calling a phone number, the call to that action needs to be prominent and visually strong to entice the user to do so.
The personal touch
Personalisation used to mean adding ‘Dear (first name)’ at the top of your message, but as technology progresses and users are more sophisticated, this message is now the bare minimum you can do to personalise your messages.
Response rates for your campaigns can be greatly improved with personalisation, as it immediately achieves a one to one relationship with each recipient.
What NOT to do
It’s also important to be aware of potential pitfalls when designing an email campaign and consideration must be given to ensuring every email recipient can open the email, regardless of the email programme or operating system that they use.
Formatting within different email programmes
Every email programme will display email designs differently depending on how it has been coded. It’s therefore imperative to ensure consistency of design across all email programmes and our design team knows the boundaries of what can and cannot be done. This knowledge eliminates any nasty surprises further down the line, avoiding messy emails that cannot be properly viewed or opened, which could potentially have a negative impact on your brand reputation.
Blocked images
Whilst designs need to be visually attractive, they also need to work effectively for the medium of email, which means including HTML text. This is particularly important for when images are blocked by firewalls, as it gives the user an understanding of the content without having to right-click to view the imagery. Ensuring any campaign can be viewed in a web browser is key to avoiding this.
Taking all these key features into consideration can considerably increase your chances of success.
Design is fundamental to creating an enticing email campaign which draws the user in and encourages them to open and click through. fuse8 has an outstanding track record in this area.
For more information on designing impactful email marketing, contact Kev Charlton on 0113 2840 688