Do’s and Don’ts of Email Designs to Avoid Pitfalls and Increase Subscribers

All marketers, whether they hail from B2C or B2B market, have a thing for email marketing. Though the digital space of targeted recipients’ inboxes have thrown them challenges from time to time, one of the most desired prizes in marketing is to carve a space there for a long time to come, if not permanently or as long as users are using that account. But competing for a space in inboxes and establishing a long-term association with subscribers is not a cakewalk, given their inboxes are always cramped with mails from different sources – personal circles, work and job search, social updates, forum updates, updates from multiple accounts that of banks, voice connection, data connections, credit cards, and of course, there are thousands of marketers (including your competitors) with their sweet offers, promotions and product updates.

What gets your email clicked and (God forbid) ignored?

Then, which part of an email or newsletter will prompt targeted audience to click and read your mails? What are the email design best practices and must-do things that marketers need to learn to get clicked, opened, clicked-through, and if all things go well, get them decide to make purchase? Similarly, which elements will drive off potential prospects even when they have decided to share their email address? Marketers and businesses end up spending A LOT before they figure out the ultimate mantras of email design – do’s and don’ts of email design that crack the deal and get on the road to email marketing success. Because we’re asked all the time for these kinds of best practices, we have taken the initiative to jot down some winning and losing points of email design with a bunch of dos and don’ts you don’t that want to miss and let your competitors taking advantage of. So let’s get started – first do’s of email designs.

Dos of Email Design

  1. Do make sure that you have done all the email design and styling using inline style attributes within the tags of the email copy content – that is within “<p style=”border:2px solid #db00 font-size:11px>”.

  1. Do try to strike a balanced ratio between image and text ratio since spam filter tools scan mails by this text-to-image ratio to check if a mail has too many images or too much texts – too much of both the element will prompt filters to report as spam

  1. Do keep it simple by using reader-friendly, light background colors instead of using images as background. At the same time, you need to also check how your email will appear on a white background when the background color or image will not load.

  1. Do keep a backup version of your email ready when recipients will face issue in loading image-rich emails – so that you can ensure your mails will load with a colored background instead of an image. HTML will enable designers to include both image and color code under the same tag. So even though images don’t appear, the emails will load with your chosen colorsthan.

  1. Do make sure that subscribers can open the link of the videos on your site from the email. You can include an image with the red, triangular play button (like you see on YouTube before the video plays) on the email and link it with the video in your site.

Don’ts of Email Design

  1. Don’t forget to 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 forget to place a call to action button – but before planting a call-to-action button, consider what you want them to do – whether to click a hyperlink, download a whitepaper or e-book, join a cause or an event or get product update information. The best place to place a call-to-action is to place it at the top of the email copy where all the eyeballs reach at first after loading the mail or even while the mail is still loading.

  3. Don’t create a top banner in all your email unless it is essential to incorporate in your promotional emails. Emails with top banners are usually marked as promotional and end up landing in the promotional tabs of email clients instead of the main inbox.

Now, it’s your turn – why don’t you share your secret tips in email design that are keeping you at the top of the email marketing game? We are keen to share with and learn from you – so, why don’t you let the cat out of the bag and brag your wisdom in the comments below?

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