email newsletter design – what to base your design on.

When working with email newsletter designs we speak to the client to determine what content they would like to use. We need to check to see if the customer has an intention to run a campaign which is orientated around a campaign they are running across all marketing channels already or if this campaign is not linked to any current promotions they will be running. If they already have a campaign we can use this to source information for developing a design for their newsletter, to save time and ensure that marketing is consistent across their brand. For businesses which do not have a campaign they are currently running, we will develop a marketing focus so that we can deliver a clear message to their customers.

It is important when creating an email newsletter design to keep the message clear and concise. We don’t wish to over engineer the campaign as to include more information than is required as this can render the campaign ineffective. A good design will focus on a more specific message which we will aim to deliver to the customer, and can be targeted to their marketing campaign.

our email newsletter design is just a portion of the email marketing campaign, it is important to remember why the email newsletter design is being created, so that as part of the larger campaign it can drive more sales and enquiries. This means that as a whole the email design is important but needs to be aligned with the whole marketing campaign. It might be necessary to develop with the client call to action from the email newsletter so this might mean taking the customer to a specific landing page which has a targeted sales message. This will allow the customer to increase conversions and enquiries rather than sending the customer to the generic homepage of their website.

email newsletter design – timing the email

it might be important to time the email also, knowing when your customers are most likely to respond/open and click on your emails. If you send the campaign in the morning but people don’t access their emails till the evening it might cause a delay in response or might mean the email is pushed back by other emails received the same day. Therefore by performing split tests when sending emails, you are able to know more about when people open your emails, maximising their impact.

email newsletter design – getting the right balance

when designing an email newsletter it is important to get the right balance between too much or too little. We don’t want to bombard the customer with offers and marketing messages as this otherwise dilute them all. It is generally better to select a single better offer and use this to drive up conversion. It also means as a business you are not looking to reduce/offer as much money off on other products but can still make a sale as a result (due to higher conversions). We also know that people have a limited amount of time available when looking at emails, so it is probably better to keep the message shorter, otherwise, it is probably only going to be ignored anyway.

email newsletter design – knowing who to send to.

it takes time to build a good customer base. We recommend that these are the people you send to or people who have explicitly signed up for emails from you. If you start sending emails to people who haven’t asked to receive them this can result in complaints. Therefore to avoid this issue it is best to only use existing customer contacts, and then build on your data collection methods for new data.

email newsletter design – examples of bad design

examples of bad email newsletter design are where people may try and cram too much into one space. People don’t want to read a book when they get your email through, they want you to get to the point and tell them what they are getting from you, that will benefit them. Once they have established this then we can look at providing more information.

email newsletter design – cleansing bad data

When sending an email you might have data which you are unsure of its quality. For example, you may have a list of 100,000 contacts, but don’t know which ones are good. While this is not a good practice generally, if this is the only data you have then this might mean this is your only option. You will need the potential setup a landing page with a form so that you can send an email to the full list of contacts and then send people over to the landing page to complete the form, those which complete the form will be ideally suited to carry over to a good list. If you are unsure if this will produce good results then it might be worth sending emails to people, leaving out older contacts that were collected past a couple of years ago. Also, another good way to clean the data is to remove contracts which are generalised. Such as sales@ info@ etc. This would indicate generally that the email is just going to go to no one specific.

email newsletter design – sending frequency

when sending emails it is important to know how frequently emails will be sent to clients, because most email sending companies charge monthly it is best to probably send at least once a month otherwise the monthly fee starts to cost more per send. This means that the campaign costs will eat into margins you might make from the campaign itself.

email newsletter design – subject content

so it is sometimes not easy to know what to write about when sending an email marketing campaign, this can result in poor content. It is a good idea to plan beforehand the sort of content that you will be sending so that you can plan how to make it more appealing to your customers. Therefore you will be able to

email newsletter design – animation

if you want to have an email newsletter design with animation this can be done using GIFs. Because video is not supported by emails it is hard to compete with the world of video which is available on sites like youtube and facebook. Therefore a work around for this is to use GIFs. They will generally all run within email browsers, allowing you to bring an element of eye catching animation into your email newsletter design. We all know that animation works so much better at increasing conversions than just static imagery so it is working using this method.

email newsletter design – building your list

to build your email list you probably have more opportunity to do this than you may think. We often speak to clients about collecting data and they realise how easily they could be collecting more. If you take for example a restaurant they can take an email for every booking if they run this through an online system, then when the customer arrives they are able to sign in to their wifi using social wifi. This allows them to collect data from every person that uses their wifi connection. They can then use this to run birthday promotions, and other offers, all triggered by their email campaigns. On the tables, they might run a competition to signup for a prize draw for a free meal. This element allows them to connect to people who they can then cross promote to other channels such as social media. By doing this the restaurant has the opportunity to bring people back, by keeping in touch with their customers it gives them the ability to re-connect after they have left. In the case of websites such as e-commerce stores, you can use the data collected from customer sales to re-sell to them later another product which they hadn’t bought previously. Considering they should already trust your business this should make the sales process easier.

email newsletter design – for products.

When selling products it is a good idea to use good email newsletter design, this is because emails are instant and can coincide with marketing campaigns that might be seasonal for example, allowing you to instantly connect to someone and offer them something that might only be valid for a single day. emails are also a great way to embed offer codes that might not be visible on your website, but also allows you to track the success of your campaign. It will allow you to check how many people used your discount voucher on checkout, giving you a way of determining the success of the campaign.