Across the industry, desginers are going back to the basics regarding their email creative. These simple guidelines will not only help your email render well across the various email clients, but will also make your email stand out above the rest. Click here to view our 2007 Email Design Guidelines, as featured in this month’s issue of Factory Direct.

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2007EmailDesignGuidelines.pdf

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We have read many articles and heard many people state this over and over again: Place your important information “above the fold.” Or in the case of email, in the preview pane.

Here are three small changes and that could make a big difference in your clicks, conversions, opens and even deliverability.

1) Place your call to action in the top part of your email. Make sure that your recipients can click on the call action link without scrolling down. You can include a link again at the bottom for good measure, but by adding it to the top you may garner a better click rate and possibly a high conversion.

2) Add a link to view the email in a browser. If an email client scrambles your HTML or the client has their images blocked, this will allow them to still view your email. You can use Publicaster to do this without hosting a version of your email on your website.

3) Ask recipients to add your from address to their address book. A small line of plain text at the top of the email asking to be white-listed can help ensure that your future emails get to the inbox.

These steps are easy to implement and should improve your email marketing results.

Are you using images in your emails as links to your “Unsubscribe” and “Forward to a Friend” pages? If so, you run the risk of recipients not being able to view these links if they have their HTML images turned off. As more and more people begin to limit what appears in their emails, it’s important to have a back-up plan so that everyone is able to clearly see how to unsubscribe from your emails.

Solution? Use the option to include an HTML footer in the Account Preferences section of Publicaster. This will appear at the bottom of every HTML email, and will be visible even when HTML images are turned off.

Example for the HTML footer:
To unsubscribe from future emails from XYZ, [~Optout~]click here[~EndOptout~].
To forward this email from XYZ to a friend, [~Forward~]click here[~EndForward~].

Another best practice is to include a link to view the email in a separate web browser at the top of your HTML emails. By clicking on the “View in Browser” link, the recipient will be able to view all the HTML images they may have missed in the email.

To do this, include this snippet like this at the top of your HTML email:
If you are having difficulties viewing the images in this email, [~ViewInBrowser~]click here[~EndViewInBrowser~].

This post was derived from my recent speaking engagement at Click Z’s Specific: Email Marketing conference in NYC. I gave a talk titled “Cutting Through the Clutter Creatively” which focused on why marketers should be strategic when considering the creative variables that make up their email marketing campaigns.

More than ever the inbox is a challenging place to capture the attention of your recipients. Some of the stats that I referenced at my talk include the Nielsen Norman research whichs states that the average recipient of marketing or promotional email has an attention span of your email of five seconds or less. And those monthly newsletters we all work so hard on producing typically only capture the attention of users for 40-50 seconds max. This information reinforces the fact that creative elements can sometimes make or break your email marketing efforts.

The key creative variables in email that marketers must embrace are the following:

From: Build the trust of your recipients by making your identity obvious. Be consistent with your From line, make sure its branded with your company name or an individual from your organization.

Subject Line: Jupiter Research found that 35% of email users open email based on what is contained within the subject line. Be sure to include your company name or brand name within the subject line, as recent research shows this can have a dramatic effect on open rates.

Copy: Personalized, targeted and relevant are three words that should define the copy in your email marketing campaigns. Write clear and concise copy, putting your main message and identifiers above the fold, and make sure you use fonts and a font size that makes reading your email easy on the eye.

Imagery: Always include your company logo at the top right or somewhere on the header. This helps with establishing the brand recognition. Always have your audience in mind and use relevant imagery that is targeted towards your recipent and tailored around your message. Be sure to hyperlink all imagery to your main call to action.

Call to Action: Place your key call to action above the fold as often as possible. During your testing phase, conduct your own internal “5 second test” to a small group of individuals to make sure your call to action is clear and to the point.

During my talk I also mentioned the importance of keeping your landing page consistent with your email creative. If you do manage to get a recipient to open and then act on your email, don’t lead them astray. Targeted landing pages with consistent creative elements can go a long way in increasing your conversion rate.

Finally, we all know that one of the best attributes of the email medium is that its easy to test and tweak your initiative. Every audience is different, so learn as much as you can about your list of recipients by testing a variety of creative elements before drawing any hard conclusions on what works and what doesn’t.

If you are interested in receiving a copy of my power point presentation from Click Z Specifics, feel free to email me at greg [at] blueskyfactory [dot] com.

Happy emailing!

This is one of those topics that may be elementary to some, mystifying to others….but either way it’s an important topic for email marketers.

Seems logical that all email marketers would want to deliver a Multipart email to optimize delivery and performance, yet a surprising number of companies choose not to include the Plain Text version.

Quick Review: Multipart email format allows you to set up both an HTML and a Plain Text version of your email. The goal being to ensure that anyone who can’t see HTML will still receive a Plain Text version.

With Multipart format, however, if you don’t provide a plain text version of your email when you set it up, and a recipient can’t get an HTML version (ie., Blackberry, Treo….) then they won’t see anything but a blank email….not something companies want to have happen.

The alternative is to choose to send an HTML Only version, rather than a Multipart version. With an HTML Only set-up, those users who can’t receive HTML format emails will instead receive the HTML version stripped of all HTML formatting. In essence they will see a modified Plain Text version consisting only of the pure text left over from the HTML version before it was stripped down….

It’s not the best option to choose, but in most cases it’s better than sending a blank email.

What’s the lesson here?

The best choice is Multipart format, but if adding a Plain Text version isn’t in your plans, then consider sending an HTML Only format to increase your odds for success!

According to a recent article in Marketing Sherpa, 69% of Outlook users employ some type of email preview before opening it. They discovered that many heavy emailers (themselves included) do not take this feature under consideration when designing an email. Basically, the first 3 lines of text in your email are displayed in Outlook’s auto-preview as well as many portable electronic devices that read email.

The trick is to make those first 3 lines compelling copy. Try to avoid putting administration text first like: “Click here to view this email with images” or your issue date and issue number. Also, try and make this text as intriguing as possible. It will be competing with other email to get read, so consider standing out with CAPITAL LETTERS or text symbols to catch the eye:-)

Try viewing some of your own designs in auto-preview and see how compelled you are to open them. Here is a link to good and bad samples to help model your next design.
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/epreview/study.html

Here is a great article from the ClickZ network that goes over some of the best practices of formatting your HTML email. Great tips for consideration when developing your email campaigns.

• Code e-mail by hand. HTML design for e-mail is trickier than Web HTML. HTML design programs such as FrontPage aren’t ideal for designing HTML e-mail. They typically add extra code that wreaks havoc with certain e-mail clients. Also, don’t use Microsoft Word’s “Save as Web Page” functions. It looks easy, but trust us — you’ll commit an HTML abomination.
• Have an HTML programmer code your e-mail template by hand to keep it clean. Alternately, use programs such as HomeSite and Dreamweaver and remove any unnecessary code by hand.
• Be careful with tables. Avoid using nested tables. Some e-mail clients, Lotus Notes and Netscape Messenger in particular, may not render them correctly. Also, avoid 1 x 1 pixel spacer GIFs (to force widths in your table data cells). These are often found in spam and could get your e-mail blocked.
• Use care with background images. Background images for individual table cells are generally acceptable but may not appear in clients such as Lotus Notes.
• Host images on your Web site instead of embedding them in messages. Some ISPs filter e-mail with embedded images. File size can get quite large with multiple embedded images, which can also get the message blocked. Instead, host those images on your Web site and make sure all paths point to the full URL (e.g., http://www.mysite.com/images). Additionally, use absolute rather than relative links. We often see messages with broken images that pointing to “images\image.gif” rather than a full absolute link.
• Avoid CSS. CSS on a Web site can simplify the coding process and ensure a consistent style. In HTML e-mail, they can cause incorrect rendering in some e-mail clients, or get stripped out or overwritten. If you must use CSS, choose the embedded styles also known as inline. Embed the style within the two body tags, not within the header. Inline CSS can also be embedded directly in the message code.
• Keep HTML e-mail 500-650 pixels wide. Wider HTML messages often force the recipient to scroll horizontally to view the whole message. Messages that are too wide are problematic, especially in a preview pane.
• Use image alt tags. These show one or two words describing an image or an action when the image doesn’t display because of slow loading time or image blocking. (However, except for Gmail, most ISPs/e-mail clients that block images also block alt tags.) A sample alt tag looks like this: “E-mail marketing solutions”
• Add functionalities (e.g., send to a friend) carefully. Many e-mail clients won’t render forms correctly or pass data from an e-mail form to your Web site. Use links to your Web site for send-to-friend forms, surveys, search boxes, and so forth to ensure the greatest compatibility.
• Just say no to Flash. Host rich-media functions such as inline audio, video, or Flash on your Web site instead of embedding them in an e-mail. Post a link that connects directly to these functions on your site. Many recipients won’t have the compatible computer platform, e-mail software, or correct version they need to render those functions correctly.
• Avoid scripting (JavaScript, Visual Basic etc.) if you can. Usually the scripts will be stripped out, causing the intended function to break. Sometimes scripts are mistaken for malicious code and get the message rejected outright. Instead, move readers to your Web site, where you can more safely use dynamic components.

It happened again today…

A client looking to expand their marketing never thought about repurposing their existing landing pages, and it could have cost them a lot of wasted time and money!

They already spent a lot of money to develop a few new landing pages for their paid search advertising, and finally had a look that was working for them. And they have a very sharp e-newsletter template as well. Now they wanted to improve their email conversions.

Once we reviewed their current strategy, it was clear that their main weakness was at the conversion level. They were getting their email recipients to click, but not much was happening once the click occurred….and the ‘landing pages’ had a lot to do with it.

I suggested we review the landing pages they were using for paid search….”Oh no, we can’t do that, those are totally different than what we need for this” was the immediate response. “How so”, I casually asked…….

Their frame of mind was that these paid search landing pages could never work for email marketing, when in fact they would work almost perfectly. They only will need minor modifications before they can easily be added to the email campaign(s). And I can almost guarantee that the results will begin to improve very quickly.

So what’s the lesson here….

1. Think of your marketing more broadly. Marketing is marketing, and online marketing is online marketing….you don’t want to ‘pigeonhole’ yourself by assuming you can’t crossover, and landing pages is a perfect example of this. It won’t work everytime, but it will work more often than you might think.
2. The most powerful element of online marketing is the ability to affordably test….and test….and test some more. So if you’ve spent time, and presumably money to test landing pages in one area….use this knowledge and apply it to another part of your marketing. In the above example, they had already tested and tested and finally come up with a strong landing page or pages that were converting well. By using these pages as a starting point for their email marketing pages, they may have eliminated the need to test much more, but at the very least they will be way ahead of where they would be if they started from scratch.

Repurpose landing pages whenever possible!

Today I received this amazing vacation offer in my inbox: 5 days in The Riviera Maya, all-expenses-paid, a swank deluxe room over-looking the gulf with a hot tub on the balcony… all for a price that looks almost criminal. So where do I sign up? Who do I call? What do I need to do to get on a plane and start living 5 days of the good life in Mexico?

The answer is “I’m not sure”. Why? because there isn’t a phone number, an email address or ‘click here’ button to tell me what to do in the email. There was finally a small text link at the very bottom prompting me to click for more info, that I had previous overlooked. With no clear and concise call-to-action, response rates will always suffer. So in this case, I’m lost and this email is a total waste of a send to the database.

The most important element of a promotional email is the call-to-action. It should be prominent and eye-catching. The email should be designed in a way that should tell the user exactly what he or she needs to do. This can sometimes be as simple as ‘click here for more info’ or as complicated as ‘read this paragraph and click on one of the options below’. Remember, you have limited time to convert this potential customer into a producing customer. Try and make the messaging and the design as easy as possible for them to experience, with a bold call-to-action that speaks literally.

Happy emailing.

This is simple, but I’ve noticed lately that it is often overlooked.

We all know that there are four critical elements for every email:

-Content (email creative, message, offer, landing page, etc.)
-From Line
-Reply To email address
-Subject Line

When preparing an email, it’s very important to test the email to be sure everything works, that there are no spellling or other grammatical errors, etc., but it’s also important to focus on something else….

How does the email look when it lands in the Inbox, and what is the First Impression!

How does the From Line look, and how does it look with the Reply To email address? Is it too long? Misleading? Odd looking?

It’s important to be consistent as you continue to email, so it’s important to get it right the first time so you don’t have to keep making changes.

How does the Subject Line appear? Test some variations to see if you can find something that seems better, and gets a better response with your test audience.

Test in a few different email clients if you are sending to web-based email clients like Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, etc. (you can set up free accounts very easily). And ask colleagues, friends, relatives, etc., to give you their own first impressions before locking into to a final format…

Email testing is too easy to skip….and it may make a world of difference in your success!