VIDEO 1: WHY DESIGN IS IMPORTANT

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1 VIDEO 1: WHY DESIGN IS IMPORTANT Hey there, I m Isaac from HubSpot Academy. Welcome to the Design and Functionality class of the Marketing Certification course. For many people, design is an afterthought, or a decoration. But design is about so much more than that! And while it can seem scary, or even unnecessary, to dive into the world of design, it is a big deal, and idea worthy of attention and focus. This class will arm you with both an understanding and a practical framework for using design to improve the messaging and performance of your s. Creating a great shouldn t be a fight between content and design. A good uses design to improve the content. So if you feel like you re trying to squish and squeeze your content into a certain format there is a better way! Content and design are equally important partners in delivering a compelling message. Quality content matters, but great design is important, too. Great content delivered through compelling design is simple and attainable, if you have the right mindset. In fact, many of the decisions that you make when creating an are actually about design. How many columns should your have? Will you include images? Where should you put the call-to-action? The very purpose of - to convey information and entire readers to action - is tied, and in many ways, comes from, the way it s designed. It s like Steve Jobs once said: Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works. So let s learn why design should be front and center in any marketing program. Realistically, people won t spend much time reading your s. So good design helps make sure you can deliver your message as quickly and succinctly as possible. In an increasingly mobile world, you re not just competing with other s. For your readers, the rest of the internet, other apps, messages from their loved ones, are all just a touch away. Great design also helps create a consistent experience for everyone who receives your s. Put yourself in the shoes of your recipient. What would they want their experience to be like? How would they like to interact with and consume your content?

2 Design, perhaps more than anything, shapes the way people interact with your company. The way that they feel about interacting with your company. So don t force your readers to conform to the marketer s expectations. Is it really your place to say You ll love this ! But not if you re in bed. Or in your car. Or reading it in the hallway. And forget about reading it at work because it doesn t look good in Outlook. But for 31.6% of you...yeah...you re gonna love this . What?!? Is that really the experience you want people to have with your company? We re better than that, people! Another reason design is important is that it will help drive conversions. It will help deliver your message with as little friction as possible. If your reader can t figure out why they re receiving an , they ll probably ignore the , delete it, or even worse, unsubscribe. And lastly, design can help you capitalize on branding and recognition to create an immediate connection with your readers. If your company has established trust and authority leads and customer, you want to take advantage of that. Think about how much time your team put into design your other online assets, like your website and your logo. And think about any offline resources as well. Surely design was a huge component of the creation process. The same is true for your s. In the next video, you ll learn about three practical things you can do to design better s that help you send great s that get results. VIDEO 2: HOW TO DESIGN GREAT S In this video, you ll learn how to design conversion-driven s that look great wherever they are viewed. There are three best practices to designing a great . First, pick a primary goal. Then, write and design the copy. And lastly, create a consistent experience First up, let s learn about the importance of picking a good primary goal. That s the foundation of any successful send. You can t create a great if you don t know why you re sending it. A successful uses space efficiently, which means that every part of your , both the content and the design, should support the goal you ve selected.

3 And that means picking a goal that is bigger than a click or an open. Deliveries, clicks, and opens are metrics - checkpoints of activity - not goals. For example, say that the goal of your send was to get readers to download a whitepaper. Every single part of your should be designed in a way that articulates the value of doing that one and singular action. Sticking to one goal will help you and your readers stay focused. If you re working towards multiple goals and experiences, that gets trickier. When people put multiple calls-to-action in an the thinking usually goes: Well, my readers are all different. And I have so much valuable content. I want to make sure to give people several options so they can select the best choice for them. Counterintuitively, that can be a frustrating experience for your readers. Instead of increasing your click-rate by presenting more options, it can decrease your click-rate, since it confuses readers and stops them in their tracks. Good design works to reduce friction and provide cues for what action a reader should take, and that becomes muddled when you include multiple goals per send. Sheena Iyengar is a Professor of Business at Columbia College and the author of The Art of Choosing. Over the years, Iyengar has found that an overload of options can be paralyzing. In a New York Times article, she concludes that choice might be appealing as a theory, but in reality, people might find more and more choice to actually be debilitating. Presenting people with lots of options can lead to something called Analysis Paralysis, which is a state of overthinking that stops people from making a decision. That s definitely something you want to avoid in your s. So for your sake, and your readers, try and only select one goal. Newsletters are a notable exception to the one-goal-per- rule. Newsletters often have multiple goals, with multiple calls-to-action. This can work because they have set the expectation with their readers that there will be multiple offers presented. In the third video of this class you will see an example of a well-designed newsletter that shares several offers while using design best-practices. Once you ve picked the goal of your send, it s time to write and design your copy. Your copy is one of the few factors a marketer can control completely. So be deliberate about it. Use it your advantage.

4 The copy is like your pitch. It s your opportunity to explain why the reader should take an action. How you structure and design that content is just as important as what you say. Look no further than the dreaded wall of text to see why both content and design are essential. Who would want to take the time to read through that? Even if that is offering something of exceptional value, chances are it will be lost, ignored, or deleted. In the Components of a High-Performing class you learned about writing compelling copy. As a reminder, the suggestions were to: write for scannability use the right tone personalize when appropriate and to proofread This best practice goes one step deeper. You ll learn how to use design principles to organize and present your copy more effectively. Vero, an service provider, created a simple way to organize the information in your called the inverted pyramid method. They describe it as a way to create focused s that convert and they totally hit the nail on the head. You might be familiar with the inverted pyramid from journalism. It suggests that writers put the most newsworthy content in the first paragraph. The difference here is that while journalism uses the bottom of the pyramid for the least important information, s place the most important piece, the call to action, at the bottom, and use the earlier space to capture attention and build anticipation. The third video of this class will take a more detailed look at the Inverted Pyramid in action, but here is one example. [The example has] a compelling image to attract attention, tight, value-focused copy, and a descriptive call-to-action. Design is all about communicating your idea visually, and there are several different ways you can do that with your copy. Use headers and subheaders: These both do cognitive heavy lifting for your readers, pointing them right towards the most important information in your s. Use font, bolding, italics, bullet points, numbering, or colored text to bring attention to specific parts of your . Don t use underline though, since it looks like a link.

5 Be deliberate about the top 25% of your This is the first content that people see. Are you going to use this space for a logo? An image? A compelling sentence of text? If you are going to use multiple calls-to-action, stack your content: Make a conscious decision about which CTA will be the primary one. That should impact where it's placed, how much space it takes up, and uniqueness from the other CTAs. These tips and strategies do work for the reader. Instead of forcing them to parse through your and determine why they received and and what they are supposed to do, these visual cues can communicate that information quickly and efficiently. Another great design tip is to reduce information density. Take a look at this excellent visualization from the Envato blog of a clunky pared down into a clear and engaging send. Take a few seconds to look at the first version of this . Do you know why it was sent? Hard to say, right? There s a lot going on. Now look at the simplified version. Headlines, bolding, structure and reduced copy make this easier to understand and consume, hopefully leading to more conversions. Perhaps the most impactful change was the addition of whitespace. Whitespace, also known as negative space, is the parts of your left unmarked. It exists between your copy, images, columns and CTAs. It might seem like a bad thing - kind of like silence on a first date. But try and think about whitespace like the couple that feels complete comfort in the silences between conversations. Take a look at the role that white-space plays in this from Duolingo: Duolingo uses excellent use of whitespace to provide a quick and engaging message. Whitespace has taken on a new importance with the rise of mobile devices. On a phone, information delivered in high-density walls of text can be difficult to read. Links clustered together can be difficult to tap with a finger. Even breaking up your copy with a few line breaks can go a long way. The final best practice of designing a great is to create a consistent experience. Regardless of where, when or how someone reads your , it should be a good experience for them. The two things that can impact your s design and functionality are the reader s device and the client. These environments will all impact your s differently, and you can t solve for all of them. But, there are some simple tips and tricks that will go a long way towards making your s look great for everyone who reads them.

6 First up, let s learn how different clients will render your , and how to design your s with that in mind. A quick primer. An client is a computer program that allows you to access and manage your . Some of the most popular clients are Gmail, Outlook, and Apple s iphone and ipad clients. One thing that can be frustrating is that design and web design are different. Over time, the various web browsers - Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer et cetera - have mostly converged to render a similar experience in each browser. is a different story, however. Desktop, webmail, and clients will display your s differently, depending on what program the client use to render their s. While there are only a few common web browsers, there are tons of different clients. For example, inbox testing software allows you to test what your s will look like in 40 different clients. And those are just the most popular ones! Among these 40 or more different clients, they all support a different subset of HTML and CSS code. And it isn t small, incremental differences in rendering. It s drastic. That means your will look different in Gmail then it will in Outlook. Just take a look at Campaign Monitor s Ultimate Guide to CSS. Some of the key CSS that web developers use to position elements on the page don t work in clients. So how you can design an that will look great on all of these different clients? Here are some guidelines. Let s start with the layout of your . You ll want to provide a link to an online version of your . Web browsers are much more forgiving than clients, so this will give your readers a way to read your if the inbox doesn t prove practical. 600 pixels is the ideal width for your s. Larger than that and you re rolling the dice on how several clients will render your s. Lean away from HTML/CSS based positioning and stick to table-structured positioning of elements. Unlike many HTML and CSS declarations, tables are universally accepted. You can add complexity to the layout of your s by nesting tables. Next, here are some tips to maintain consistency when using images and styling. Make sure to add alt text to your images. Some clients block images by default, so it s imperative to check that your still makes sense without images. Alt text can be a huge help here. Similarly, avoid creating your as a single image. Not only does it trip spam filters, but

7 you re in trouble if a reader s client doesn t load images, or they ve turned that setting off manually. Avoid using background images. Many clients won t render them. Don t use externally-referenced CSS. All of your CSS should be written in-line. Be sure to define the width and height of your images. This will help your retain its structure, even if images are turned off. Use absolute links and don t use.png files. The second factor in maintaining consistency is the type of device your readers use to access their . For many of the people watching this, a majority of your readers will be viewing your s on mobile. Consider that 54% of s are opened on mobile. According to UK telecoms regulator Ofcom4, 81% of smartphone users say is the MOST popular activity they use their phone for. When asked, 41% of readers said they wanted s that can clearly be read on smartphones. That number has more than doubled since last year This doesn t have to be a bad, or a scary thing. One best practice that s already been discussed is the importance of simplifying your s. Designing for mobile forces you to embrace simplification. Tom Boates, the VP of User Experience at RunKeeper, put it well, Designing s for a mobile screen forces you to be ruthless with your content and aesthetic and makes you get to the point faster. Less is more. Can you take the same idea and explain it with less words, less space, and more clarity? Here s a great example of how to re-imagine your s for mobile from Envato s blog. They ve taken that wall of text and shortened it significantly, added an image, and moved the call-to-action above the fold. That that looks great on a desktop might not look so good on mobile. Luckily, there are some simple things you can do to improve how your s look across any device. Use mobile-friendly templates. Many service providers give users pre-approved templates that will automatically scale to any device. This removes much of the stress of optimizing your s. When possible, stick to templates with a single-column layout, though more savvy designers often branch out to more complex template structures.

8 If possible, move your call-to-action above the fold. That way you can make sure even the most flighty and distracted of your readers are presented with the chance to convert. Since many folks will be scanning on their devices, be sure to put the navigation in the footer so people see the most important content first. Mobile reading habits are also a great reason to use whitespace to your advantage, even if it s just line breaks. You don t want to inundate people with a wall of text before they even reach the CTA. The text you do use should be minimum 14pt font. Otherwise it might be too small to read on mobile. And when they do reach that CTA, make sure it s big enough to tap with a thumb. The magic number is 44 by 44 pixels. Those are the best practices for designing s that look great and perform well. In the next video, you ll learn what these best practices look like in action through several different examples. VIDEO 3: WHAT A WELL DESIGNED LOOKS LIKE In this video, you ll see some examples of real s with effective design. First up, let s take a closer look at the Duolingo example from the earlier video. Duolingo is an application that teaches people new languages. They provide users with short, daily lessons that progress in difficulty. This example is sent to people who haven t used the app for an extended period of time. There are several things that Duolingo does well here that are worth emulating. First, they use bright, attractive colors to guide the reader to the most important parts of the message. With only a blink you know this is from Duolingo, they re sad that you haven t used the app, and they want to help you get back on track. Second, the image that they use isn t just to make things pretty or to take up space. It conveys an emotion, and helps make an appeal. Third, there is an expert use of white-space and an efficient delivery of information. There are only three sentences in the whole . Instead, they use headers, bolding, the image and a descriptive CTA to carry the entire weight of communicating the message.

9 And lastly, Duolingo uses the inverted pyramid effectively. They grab your attention with the headline and the image, build anticipation by making an emotional appeal and reminding you of your goals, and then deliver the call-to-action. Here s another well-designed from Prezi, presentation software that makes it super-easy to create visually compelling presentations. From top to bottom, let s look at some things this does well: the first thing a reader sees is the header We thought you might like this new Prezi template. Instantly, they know WHY they got the and WHAT value is inside. Next is the image. This image is so great because it ACTUALLY displays something valuable. It s a preview of the template. There s a common saying that a picture is worth 1,000 words. A great uses that truism to its advantage. Moving to the copy - it might seem simple, but that one line break makes it easier to consume the content. And lastly, they have a contrasting CTA with descriptive copy and plenty of whitespace. It becomes the focal point of the , enticing readers to take the next step. Lastly, let s look at a newsletter from Findarace.com, a website that helps people find races to participate in. In the earlier videos, you learned the importance of having only goal for your s. The obvious exception to this is the newsletter. The purpose of a newsletter is to deliver several messages at once. Sending a newsletter presents any business with a couple of tricky decisions: What is the primary offer? How can you signal that but still encourage people to read more? How can you present multiple offers without overwhelming the reader? Not an easy proposition. This example is great because it takes many of the principles of individual s and stacks them on top of one another. This allows the reader to remain focused, and the marketer can give each offer it s proper due. This uses: Compelling images to attract the reader s eye Headers and bolding The line breaks and white space that are essential to an effective

10 And short, creative copy on the CTA s That s a wrap folks. Hope you enjoyed learning from these well-designed examples. Best of luck as you dive into the world of design yourself!