Anatomy of a Marketing Email Your Guide to Email Design and How it Can Work for You
After all, Isn t Email Dead? The first email was sent in 1971. In digital marketing terms that s like a million years ago. Over the years email s death as been predicted several times. First it was instant messaging that was going to kill email. Then it was SMS and text messaging. Then it was social media You get the point. Email has been around a long time and it will continue to be. We are expect Businesses will actually focus more on email marketing in the next 10 years than they have since the beginning of the internet. Here s why: Wait. Isn t Email Dead? Cost Effective Email Marketing has an avg. ROI of $38 for each dollar spent. One in 5 companies report an ROI of over 70:1. (DMA National Email Report 2015) Reach Your Customers 70% of people say they always open emails from their favorite companies. (Exact Target) Nurture Repeat Business In 2014, email marketing was cited as the most effective digital marketing channel for customer retention in the United States. (emarketer)
Before we get too far into images and content. To truly understand the whole of email design we need to understand the parts that make up the whole. In this ebook, we relate the parts of an email to dissecting a frog. Who would ve thought an 8 th grade science lesson could relate to digital marketing, well here you go. Before we slice this email up. A frequently asked question is - what size should my email be? The answer is somewhere between 550 and 640 pixels. 640 used to be the magic number before the iphone got bigger and better screens. Now the number really closer to 600. A good rule is to make sure you are under the 640 mark. You don t need to worry too much about height as long as your email template will scale vertically. However, you should consider how much your audience needs to scroll though making sure your most important content is towards the top. The other spec to consider is file size. You want to make sure that the size of your HTML email file is between 15 and 100 kilobytes. Files larger than that can get caught in SPAM filters and experience delivery problems. If you are wondering how to calculate pixel size of your design. You can check it in a tool like Photoshop or an even easier way is to download a browser plugin like MeasureIT for Firefox or Chrome.
1. From Name The From Name is one of the most overlooked aspects of email marketing. Consider this, 43% of email recipients click the SPAM button based just on the From Name. It s basically the name of the sender, but that name could be a person or it could be your Brand name. The From Name can also be a business division or even a communication name. The best practice is to use the value that will best relate to your readers when engaging with your content. For example, if you are sending an email to existing customers and a contact has had the same customer service representative for the past 10 years, it might make the most sense to use that customer service representative as the From Name for that campaign. However, if you re sending an email campaign to prospects who are only vaguely aware of your business. Then having your Brand name as the From Name would likely make more sense and be a better strategy.
2. From@Address The From@Address is the email address that the email will appear to have come from. Like the From Name, this can be the email of a person, general company or more specific to a division or communication stream. Make sure your From@Address works in conjunction with your From Name. Here s an example. If you send an email with the From Name as Billy Donuts, then it makes the most sense to have the From@Address be their email address billy.donuts@thebest coffeeshopexample.com, and not a general company address. It s also important to work with your email service provider and your IT resources to get your From@Address configured correctly. An incorrectly configured From@Address is one of the quickest ways to land all your emails in the Junk folder. For more information on finding out if your From@Address is configured correctly you can visit senderscore.org, type in your domain name and it will tell you what issues you may have with deliverability based your current set up.
3. Subject Line You re probably very familiar with Subject Lines already. The goal of the Subject Line is simply to describe the theme of the content and identify what your main offer in the email. We suggest writing shorter Subject Lines. The explosion in mobile email views tends to cut off longer Subject Lines making them unreadable. You should also include the main offer in the first 35 characters of the Subject Line. Another tip is using personalization in the Subject Line. The most common execution is inserting the recipients first name. You could use other personalization's such as company name or product purchased. Or you can go the simplest route like HP did in the example above and simply use the word you. At least this gives the impression that the email was personalized just for the recipient without needing any data or additional technology to make the personalization happen. Is personalization worth the effort? Take note of the fact listed that you can see an increase of 22.3% in open rate by using personalized subject lines.
4. Preheader Text In short, Preheader Text is the first line of actual text in your email. Why is Preheader Text so important? We ll tell you, mobile devices typically have three values that show up in the email preview pain : 1. From Name, 2. Subject Line, and 3. Preheader Text. Make you Preheader Text enticing for the recipient to actually click and open your email. Best practice is to keep this line of text under 50 characters. You should also make sure the first line of text in your email is not something like: If you are having trouble viewing this email click here. That gives your reader absolutely no extra value in why they should open or read your email. If you are not currently focused on Preheader Text, you re not alone. Research shows that nearly 70% of email marketers ignore this strategy, so there is lots of room to standout from the crowd using this simple strategy.
5. Header The Headers provides branding. A popular way of doing this is simply including your company logo. If you re using a logo or image, our tip is to keep it narrow. A Header that is less than 75 pixels will keep your important body content or call to action above the fold on the majority of screen sizes. Not every email needs a Header. Especially B2B sales driven emails. In that case you might want to remove the Header to make the email seem more manual and less automated. As if you re really taking the time to write and personally send emails.
6. Headline The goal of the Headline is to illustrate the theme of the email and most importantly the offer. A well written Headline is truly an art. You want to gain enough of your reader s attention that they invest additional time in reading the rest of your content. We suggest keeping Headlines under 40 characters and never taking up more than 2 lines of space. Make sure you use at least 30 point font for readability on mobile devices. Headlines should ALWAYS be text, and NEVER an image. Using text ensures your headline will be visible on email clients like Microsoft Outlook that does not automatically display images. Additionally, image size can be modified on mobile devices, which is another reason why headlines should be created as stand alone text.
7. Body The Body is the primary content of your email. In many ways, this should be viewed as what you re offering your readers. The goal of the Body is to provide just enough information about your offer that your reader motivated towards your Call to Action (CTA). Remember to keep your Body easy to read. Try using sub-headlines, lists and bullets to make skimming the content easy for readers who will only give your email a few seconds of their attention. An additional tip is to also include text links in your Body to lead readers to your offer and increase conversion.
8. Heroshot Image A Heroshot is an image that relates to your body content and offer, but most important of all draws attention to your call to action (CTA). Your Heroshot should illustrate details about your product or improve relevance about your service. Typically, there are two types of Heroshots. A Product Heroshot is just that, an image of your product. A Lifestyle Heroshot shows the experience your target audience will have with your product or service. The best Heroshots are a combination of both, using an image of your product in use. If you are interested in more information designing Heroshot Images for conversion, you can download our Heroshot Scorecard.
9. Call to Action The Call to Action (CTA) is in many ways the purpose of your email. If you do not have a CTA in your email, it s likely to lack a relevant offer for your readers meaning you might not want to send the email at all. Email CTA s are almost always a button requesting your target audience to take some specific action (Download, Register, Review, Purchase, Learn More). In some cases the desired action could be to schedule an appointment or call for service. Your CTA Button should stand out from the rest of your email design. You can attract readers attention by using contrasting, eye catching colors. The wording should also articulate an aspect of urgency you can use words like now and today to quickly motivate your audience to action.
10. Secondary Content Secondary Content is all other content that is not as critical as your Body or main message. For that reason, it should appear less prominent and located below the primary Body Copy. Secondary Content can be one section, or multiple sections. However, we suggest limiting your Secondary Content to three sections or less, as having too much Secondary Content and distract readers from your main message and decrease conversion and overall email performance. Also note, Secondary Content is optional. Your main message and primary content should be your focus. Secondary Content can be added if you feel it is a relevant message to support your main offer or reader s personal interests.
11. Recapture Area The Recapture Area should try and provide something of relevance just in case the Body, CTA and Secondary Content capture the reader s intrest. Popular Recapture Areas tend to include links to the most popular areas of your website, or customer service links. You ll also notice Recapture Areas often include links to Social Media sits. Similar to Secondary Content, the Recapture Area is optional. In fact, we frequently recommend removing this section, as it can be a distraction from your main Body or CTA.
12. Footer The Footer is the last section, yet it s probably one of the most important areas of your email. The Footer includes all of the necessary compliance items: Unsubscribe Links, Physical Address, Privacy Policy, Contact Information and any additional Legal Information you may need to include. Inside your Footer, we recommend making your Unsubscribe Link obvious and easy to find. Some email marketers will often try to hide the Unsubscribe Link by making it small and a light colored font That s a wrong move! You would much rather the person unsubscribe from your emails if they re not receiving any value from them. Making it easy for them to unsubscribe reduces the chances of your emails being reporting as SPAM or Junk with their email client. SPAM or Junk clicks are one of the top reasons emails get blocked from specific email providers reducing the deliverability of your future email campaigns. In regards to compliance - Follow the link in the tip section for compliance rules and regulations for the geographies that you market in.
Now You Know the Design Elements of a Standard Marketing Email Deliver The Content They Need The purpose of a goal is to accomplish it. Our performance marketing team integrates complex acquisition, engagement and optimization programs under unified goals to translate audience needs into business results. Ah, the sweet sound of ROI. Schedule An Email Audit