Do’s and don’ts in email template design

24 July 2019

When creating marketing emails, questions often arise like: “Am I doing this right?”, “Should my button be yellow or purple?”, “Is my text too long or too short?”, “Will people actually read the email?” etc. As with many things in digital marketing & email marketing, there are no ultimate answers, and the success of your email campaigns largely depends on the type of people you are reaching out to and the industry your business operates in. The definitive answers to the questions above can only be found through the mantra: testing, analyzing, knowing & applying.

However, there are some tips and tricks that can help you get off to a good start. We focus on four essential elements of email marketing:

Subject lines
Images
Call to action
Email layout

Subject Lines

Subject lines for email marketing are crucial because they serve as a filter for recipients to decide whether they will open/read the email. A subject should always align with the purpose of your email. For example, if you want your contact to buy a ticket, the subject should clearly convey that you are offering them the opportunity to purchase tickets.

There are a few technical aspects that need to be considered when crafting a subject line for email marketing:

Length: Focus on keeping it short, especially for mobile! Ideally, the subject line should be under 50 characters. Additionally, you should place the most important information first for maximum impact.
Emojis: Emojis might seem silly, but research has shown that including the right emotion in your subject line can increase your open rate by 56% compared to subject lines that contain only text. This brings a positive boost to the email’s opening rate.
Preheaders: This is the first bit of text from your email that appears in the email overview beneath the subject line. It’s important to keep it within a 150-character limit. If you leave this section blank, the email program will usually fill it automatically with the first text from your email itself, which often ends up as something like “click here to view the online version.” The preheader often includes additional information to persuade the recipient to open the email, complementing the subject line.

Image Use in Email Marketing

Images are frequently and widely used in email marketing. It’s obviously nice to brighten up an email with an attractive image, but there are also a few rules and limitations that can either positively or negatively affect the success of your emails.

Dimensions

The size of your image is very important because it determines a large part of the layout of your email as well as the file size of your email. The larger the images, the larger the file size. Email programs download the images that come with your email, which can make an email very large and slow to load. This is, of course, bad for the customer experience. In mailboxes with strict file size limits, this can also cause your email to not be delivered at all or to be marked as spam. Technical aspects of image formatting for email marketing:

Width: An image should be no wider than 600 to 640px, as this size corresponds with the typical width of a preview window in an email program.
Resolution: Most images directly from a camera have a standard resolution of 300dpi, which is much too high for use on computer screens. The recommended resolution for images in digital media is 72dpi. Your resolution affects the size of your image, expressed in KB or MB. The larger this number, the longer it takes for an image to load on a website.

Text-to-Image Ratio in Emails

In the spam scores of an email, it’s more important to ensure you maintain a correct text-to-image ratio. An email should be able to convey the same message without relying solely on images. In email programs like Outlook, which do not automatically download images by default, an entirely image-based email would appear empty to a user until they click “download images.” A healthy ratio here is 80% text to 20% images.

ALT Tags in Emails

ALT tags are descriptive texts that you can link to an image. They serve as an alternative if the image cannot be displayed.

Every image you use in your email must have an ALT tag.

An additional benefit is that correct use of ALT tags allows people with visual impairments to have the email read aloud to them by their computer.

Call to Actions in Email Marketing

Call to actions (CTAs) are buttons, links, and images that prompt the reader of your email to take an action. In the case of emails, this action typically involves clicking through to a landing page. A CTA must be clear and stand out from the content of your email. The best emails aim for one clear CTA aligned with the goal you have defined for your email. In email marketing, a CTA is absolutely necessary.

Does this mean I can’t use other links in an email?

No, you can add as many links as necessary in an email, but the primary CTA and the goal of the email must always be clear. Other links should only support or reinforce this main CTA. This is called visual hierarchy.

How do I determine the right call-to-action?

A good CTA has concise, to-the-point copy that is no longer than 25-30 characters. It should be highlighted with a prominent color and surrounded by enough white space so it stands out clearly. If the CTA is a button, it should be at least 50px in height for optimal visibility.

What color works best?

There is no exact science to determine what works best for everyone. Generally, an orange button with white text is believed to deliver the best results, but this depends on your industry expectations and the color guidelines in your brand’s style guide.

Email Marketing Layout

The most important aspect to consider in the layout of your email is that the structure should be designed in such a way that the elements of your email campaign (headers, images, buttons, etc.) guide the reader’s eyes directly to your call-to-action (CTA). The goal is to encourage them to click through and learn more about your offer, rather than trying to explain all the details of your offer within the email itself.

A commonly used and simple model for this is the V-shape model. What the V-shape model clearly illustrates is how to influence the reading direction with a clear visual hierarchy, enabling the reader to immediately understand what the key elements are when they “scan” the email.

The layout of your email and everything you do in email marketing should be designed with the goal you’ve set in your email marketing strategy in mind.

Curious for more useful tips and tricks? Or just wondering if we follow these do’s and don’ts ourselves?