Email Marketing Designs - Do's & Don'ts To Increase Email Subscribers

Emails like we all know are crucial for business. Communicating with your customers, email marketing is one of the most preferred online marketing practices today.

From laying the groundwork of targeting your leads and choosing topics, to writing the subject and body, to designing the graphics and layout, creating a stunning email marketing campaigns can be a long and arduous process.

Digital marketing experts are constantly in search of new email marketing techniques on how to increase the subscribers. From the expert’s choice, we bring you the do’s and don’ts of email marketing designs 2018 that helps you bring more leads, conversion and business to your company.

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Do’s & Don’ts Of Email Marketing Designs 2018

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1.Do Have A Varying Number Of Email Layout Designs

There are brands out there that have also figured out how to create emails that are pretty darn beautiful. While plain text or bare-bones emails can still be extremely effective, sometimes you want to amaze your subscribers with creative, captivating, or delightfully understated email design.

2.Do Keep The Right Width Of Emails Under 650 Pixels

The general rule for email size is to keep it 650px or less in width. This allows the email to display correctly (overall) in most of the email clients and display configurations. Keep email widths below 650 pixels. Outlook’s preview pane can properly display emails up to 650 pixels. Larger emails require side-scrolling hence, might be problematic for your readers to view the emails

3.Do Position Your Images On Your Left-hand Side 

Our eyes naturally start in the upper left-hand corner of a page, and usually follow an F-shaped pattern on the screen. Put your images where readers will see them first. A study from Jakob Nielsen found that the upper left corner is a hot spot, making it a great place for images.

4.Do Put Videos In Your Email Newsletter Designs

Video in email is still in its infancy; as such, it doesn’t render well in most email clients. In fact, most email clients don’t let you view rich media by default, which means your video might not get seen.

Instead, take a screen capture of your video and put in that little white “Play” triangle where we’re used to seeing at the beginning of a video. You can then include that image in your email, and link it to a web page with the video embedded.

5.Do Use Link Shorteners For Your URLs

This may not seem like a big deal in your beautiful HTML email where URLs are hidden behind anchor text, but think of your plain-text version for a minute. In plain-text emails, the URL appears in parentheses and if your URL is long, that can start to look pretty unwieldy, particularly if you’re including a ton of URLs in your email. Use a link shortening service, there are plenty of free ones like bit.ly and ow.ly — to shorten up those links.

6. Do Design With Out-of-the-norm Fonts

Typography can prove a bit dull when dealing with email as only the basic web fonts are supported across different email clients.

Below is the list of the most reliable email fonts:

Sans-serif: Arial, Arial Black, Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, Verdana
Serif: Courier, Courier New, Georgia, Times New Roman
Depending on whether the recipient is a Mac or PC user some other fonts may be available:

Mac: Helvetica, Lucida Grande, Geneva, Times
PC: Impact, Lucida Sans Unicode

Luckily, with HTML you can choose multiple fonts from which the best suited option is automatically selected. For example, having Arial as a fallback for Helvetica is a good idea. In your HTML it would look like this: “font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif” – “sans-serif” being the last option displaying any sans-serif font if none of the mentioned ones are available.

This makes sure that the font is somehow in line with the chosen style in case the selected options aren’t available.

7. Do Use Unsubscribe Link, Physical Address & Your Company Name

Include these 3 elements in your email template will help ensure you’re always “CAN-SPAM” compliant. Because including these three components is well, the law. And it’s way easier to just build it into your template than add it to every single email you send out.

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1.Don’t Forget To Use A Table Format

Use a table format in your email to keep multiple sections of your body content distinctive and clear. Also, don’t cram your email with too much content to repel your targeted readers. Content that is brief, well-sectioned and divided into various sections will allow readers to navigate and read content easily. You can simply add hyperlinks to different sections to the content on the landing page, making easier for readers to choose what they want to read.

2.Don’t Go Too Small Or Too Big

Size matters in the world of email. Content that is too small might annoy its reader. The less columns the better usually – a simple single column layout is often enough for delivering an effective message. The least you can do is try to avoid going over three columns. If the email needs to include smaller content make sure all text is legible and images still look good. Ensure that your emails are mobile optimized.

If an email is too large it can cause various viewing problems. For example, on some email clients horizontal scroll bars appear when the opening window is smaller than the email itself. In order to avoid this occuring keep the maximum width of the email to 600px as it does feel like a bit of a deal breaker if some content gets cut off when opening an email.

3.Don’t Use HTML Bullet Points

Those pretty HTML bullets you’re used to don’t work too well when rendered in email. Use a plain text alternative, like dashes (-) or asterisks (*) to ensure readers don’t see broken or missing bullets in their email message.

4.Don’t Forget About Image Alt Text

Nope, alt text isn’t just to help search engines read images on your website. Alt text in emails helps readers determine what images were supposed to be had they rendered in the inbox. Including clear, descriptive Alt text helps fill in the blanks for recipients if images are blocked, turned off, or rendering improperly.

5.Don’t Rely Solely On Images

Images within emails to allow for more design options, such as including special fonts for example. This may be a risky practise, as some email clients tend to block images preventing your recipient from seeing them, meaning that instead they will be faced with an empty space which may make the email look less appealing. Or even worse the email will end up in spam folders. When images are blocked your only hope is to impress with words.

If you use images, it is advisable to include your key message in plain text to make sure it gets delivered.

6.Don’t Ignore Web-standards For HTML

When you write the HTML code for the email, be careful of how the HTML renders in different browsers. Precisely, the HTML code you use should be standardized and free from errors. Using obscure codes that are not supported in older browsers is considered a bad practice. Pay close attention to HTML formatting, alignment and the best practices that each browser supports and understands.

7.Don’t Forget A Plain Text Version

Always offer a plain text version of your email message, no matter how compelling and attractive your HTML email template might be. Some email clients or third party email apps may not support rendering email messages crafted in HTML, so you should also convey your information in an alternative plain text version.

Reach out to us to know how you can achieve Email Marketing Success for your business!! 

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