Use Flickr Creative Commons slideshows to inspire email creativity

November 20, 2012 By

Want to force yourself to be more creative in the use of images in your email marketing? Try this simple, easy trick. Start with the subject or topic of your email marketing message. Perhaps you’re going to draft up a message about your latest product or service offering. Let’s say you’re marketing a new coffee blend.

Next, pick a number between 1 and 100. Let’s say you picked 35.

Go to the Flickr Creative Commons Commercial Use pool and look at the top 100 most recent photos. Scroll down and count down until you reach number 35. In this case, I ended up with this image:

Izzy's 2nd birthday

Using this image as the centerpiece of your message, figure out how to tie the visual to your marketing message. Perhaps you could talk about how your new blend of coffee infuses customers with the energy and liveliness of a child, or gives you a playful, vibrant start to the day. Whatever you write, make it fit the imagery that you picked.

Obviously, if the image is woefully off target or inappropriate for business, try the image next to it on either side, but use this trick to force your brain to be more creative in your email marketing copywriting. You’ll be amazed at how a random photo can inspire you to look at your products or services in new and different ways!

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Filed Under: Creative & Design

Have you tested animated graphics in your emails?

March 7, 2012 By

Emails don’t have to be bland, stale, or boring. It’s hard enough to get subscribers to open your emails (turn on images), so when they do, it’s important your creative entices the reader to take action. If you are looking for ways to make your emails pop in your subscriber’s inbox, then consider using cinemagraphs (AKA animated GIF files or moving photos).

Cinemagraphs have been around a long time, mostly used for websites, but I barely see companies leveraging this tactic to make their email content more eye grabbing. The best part about cinemagraphs is they work with almost every ISP (Microsoft Outlook will display the first image).

Retailers can use animated GIF files to make their products come alive in the inbox.

As always, we recommend testing cinemagraphs to see if they help drive engagement. Don’t look at whether or not cinemagraphs increased your Open Rates, since images have to be turned on for your subscribers to see them. Cinemagraphs should entice your subscribers to take an action based on the specific goal of your email campaign. If the goal of your email campaign is to showcase a product, see if using a cinemagraph actually increases the click through rate for that specific product; more importantly increases actual purchases.

When building your sample size, you may want to consider your subscribers domains, past click through/open rate behavior, or purchase history. Many of our clients have used cinemagraphs in their win-back campaigns to see if they can get unactive susbscribers to take action.

So how do you begin? The best part about using cinemagraphs is they are fairly simple to incorporate into your emails. Here are a few resources on how to build your own cinemagraph.

We recommend keeping your cinemagraphs file size below 75kb for optimizing the subscriber experience.

For more inspiration take a look at the following:

Fashion/Retail:

Travel

Food/Restaurants

Even if you don’t see a dramatic lift in engagement from using cinemagraphs at the very least your emails will stand out from your competitors and be more creative. It never hurts mixing it up to keep your subscribers interested in your emails.

I would be curious to know your results, so feel free to email me with your feedback at mpiersa@whatcounts.com.

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Creative & Design

Catch all the Super Bowl ads before the game!

February 4, 2012 By

It’s 4:30 pm on a Thursday in early February; and I feel like Ron Burgundy.

From high on mountaintop, I just want to shout, “News Team, assemble . . .!” then tell them how Super Bowl Commercials have always been a small passion of mine. Only I don’t have a mountaintop; I don’t have a news team; I don’t even have a microphone. Instead, in the grand tradition of Lloyd Dobler, I’ve created a mix tape. I hope you enjoy.

INTRO

To kick things off with a bang we have The Bark Side:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ntDYjS0Y3w[/youtube]

I believe this is Volkswagen’s online-only teaser for their sequel to last year’s universally adored Star Wars themed The Force. The restraint exercised in this spot is amazing. Little details are doled out until finally it dawns on you that yep, these dogs are actually barking the Imperial March from Star Wars; it’s kind of like reading a Dickens novel. The end of the ad points to a microsite where you can create an “Intergalactic Invite” to your Super Bowl Party; love it.

So that spot, seen over 10 million times on YouTube, is actually just the teaser intended to drum up interest in this spot: The Dog Strikes Back: 2012 Volkswagen Game Day Commercial:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-9EYFJ4Clo[/youtube]

This spot goes for the cutesy heart factor and then pulls back to… well I don’t want to ruin anything for you; have fun!

BREAK BEAT

Both of these spots are examples of an Advertising term called “Borrowed Interest.” In Advertising School they teach you “Borrowed Interest” is a lazy strategy and never works unless done exceptionally well. Initially I of course rejected this principle, but over time I’ve come to realize it’s true – it’s the difference between a seamless piece of embedded advertising like the Mini Cooper in The Italian Job, and the jarring experience you get every time the characters on your favorite show pithily extoll the virtues of whatever Chevy they are driving.

One “leaked” Super Bowl spot you’ve probably already seen that employs borrowed interest really well is Honda’s Ferris Bueller’s Spot: Official 2012 Honda CR-V Game Day Commercial – “Matthew’s Day Off” Extended Version

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhkDdayA4iA[/youtube]

They borrowed my affinity for the character, Ferris Bueller, and transmogrified it into a surprising desire to take a Sport Utility Mini Van for a joy ride. Brilliant!

Borrowed interest appears to be a staple of the Automobile Industry this year. You will doubtlessly see the Seinfeld spot for Acura, but I personally I prefer the Audi R8 spot: Audi R8 Super Bowl – Autobild.es

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwvhkby–IA&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

Sure it borrows it’s narrative from the seminal scene in perhaps the greatest film ever made, but there is an attitude strategically conveyed at the end of this spot that really leaves the brand in a fun place to move forward, “Old Luxury just got put on notice, Audie and the R8 are here.” Very cool.

SLOW JAM

Switching gears and getting away from Automobiles for a moment, I’m a real big fan of Marketing that clearly conveys a benefit. Here is a focused and strategic spot that may go under the radar Monday Morning. FirstBank – Time Out (Superbowl 2012)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Y9FJw9ysW_g[/youtube]

That’s just awesome, maybe not the spot with the most viral potential, but in the moment, during the game that’s really, really smart.

HEATING IT BACK UP AGAIN

I think it was the wise poet Van Wilder who first said, “Sex sells Gwen, sex sells.” Taking that strategy to Super Bowl-ian heights H&M gives us 30 seconds of David Beckham in his underwear: H&M David Beckham Bodywear Super Bowl Commercial 2012

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZOq5iQvls4&feature=related[/youtube]

I’m giving this one just a big huge fail. Strategically I’d like to know whom they think they are talking to. Is the idea that women are going to rush out and buy their guy a pair of David Beckham boxer briefs? If that is their intended outcome, I think they missed a real opportunity to tie this thing into Valentine’s Day; to turn the idea of a man buying a little something special for a woman on it’s head – that’s fun. I don’t really see that here.

Outro

Okay last spot and we’re going to end on a high note, a lot of brands are into crowdsourcing these days. Doritos is probably the most famous and they get a ton of YouTube content out of the build up, but this homemade spot for the Chevy Camaro might be my favorite of the night: Homemade Camaro ad Wins Chevrolet Super Bowl slot [Official]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHNgyZMqlYc[/youtube]

Thanks for taking the ride, you can catch up with me on Twitter @writemcsean. This Sunday I will be posting to two hash tags: #MothersBowl & #brandbowl

Sean McGarry
Services Account Manager, WhatCounts

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Filed Under: Creative & Design, Video

Gestalt Principles of Email Design: Similarity

January 24, 2012 By

What makes an email stand out? Certainly, the WhatCounts email marketing mantra of sending relevant, timely, targeted, valuable content to people who asked for it is a great place to start, but as any retailer will tell you, packaging matters a whole lot. For the purposes of capturing interest, the packaging matters more than the content – ask anyone if presents under a holiday shrubbery are more or less intriguing if gift wrapped.

So how do you design an email message, a creative in design lingo, to do what you want it to do? Certainly we tell you to test, to try different things, but what sort of framework might be helpful in creating great email?

A framework created by Christian von Ehrenfels known as Gestalt Perception may shed some light on effective email creative design. Gestalt Perception tells us of 6 basic laws of perception:

  • Law of Closure — The mind may experience elements it does not perceive through sensation, in order to complete a regular figure (that is, to increase regularity).
  • Law of Similarity — The mind groups similar elements into collective entities or totalities. This similarity might depend on relationships of form, color, size, or brightness.
  • Law of Proximity — Spatial or temporal proximity of elements may induce the mind to perceive a collective or totality.
  • Law of Symmetry (Figure ground relationships)— Symmetrical images are perceived collectively, even in spite of distance.
  • Law of Continuity — The mind continues visual, auditory, and kinetic patterns.
  • Law of Common Fate — Elements with the same moving direction are perceived as a collective or unit.

Source: Wikipedia

Let’s dissect just one of these laws today and look at the law of similarity. The mind sees similar things as a cohesive unit. This is generally a good thing, in the sense that if you had to mentally parse every leaf on a tree, you’d go insane. Our minds just collect all of the individual points together and turn them into the collective unit we call a tree.

That said, suppose that you needed to be dissimilar. Suppose in your email creative, there was one thing you needed people to immediately discern and pay attention to, such as a call to action to buy, donate, or act. Rather than just yell louder about the call to action, take this Gestalt law and put it to work. Make everything that’s less essential a little more similar in color, size, tone, contrast, and shape, and make the call to action dissimilar so that it’s noticeable even from far away.

Untitled

Step away from your screen. Take a few steps back. Can you see the dissimilar item in the picture above?

Step back even farther. See how far away you can get from your screen until you can’t discern the dissimilar element that draws your attention.

Do this with your email creative. See if you can easily discern what the most important item is supposed to be. See if your eyes and mind pick it out quickly and easily, and if you can’t, then keep working on this design principle using things like color, size, contrast, lines, shape, font, etc. until you can.

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Filed Under: Best Practices, Creative & Design

What vintage ads can teach you about email marketing design

January 20, 2012 By

Study something old to learn something new: vintage ads

In the Japanese martial arts, there’s an aphorism worth noting: on ko chi shin, to study something old in order to learn something new. When you’re starving for new creative ideas for your email marketing, a step into the past might be called for.

Let’s specifically look at the golden age of newspaper advertising, from about 1880 to 1920. During this period of time in America, newspaper advertising was the only mass media channel available. Commercial radio didn’t really have a presence and there was certainly no Internet. Here’s why this period is worthy of study: advertisers had to pack a tremendous amount of punch into very little space and still be effective.

Sound familiar?

Take a look at this thumbnail collection below:

Flickr: The Early Advertising (pre 1920) Pool

What’s familiar? What’s obvious? Subject lines – the headlines of the ads – are prominent and the hooks are sharp. Too fat, asks one ad. Be your own boss, why work for others states another. Electric wonders at little cost. Even just tiny thumbnail sized images give us an indication of what’s in the ad and why we should consider reading it.

Take another look. Look how many of the creatives, how many of the designs put a human face prominently in the ad. Advertisers of that era used a time-tested method in their ads: the human face is something we are biologically wired to pay attention to first. We can’t not pay attention to a human face if we see it.

Let’s dig in more:

The headline, which not only functions as the subject line but also the leader of the copy, ends with a question. It’s designed to get people to ask themselves the question mentally as they read the ad and primes them for the benefits and details that follow. The primary benefit – not a feature, but a real benefit – follows immediately: make $2,000 a year. Bear in mind that this ad is saying you can earn $44,000 a year in 2010 terms – not bad!

Read into the copy and you see additional benefits – we tell you how, everything furnished, large profits, money coming in daily.

The closer is a powerful and simple pitch: write for free particulars and your starter kit. It’s an offer at little to no risk and with a clear, unmistakeable call to action.

The lessons that early newspaper advertisers learned shouldn’t lay in the dustbin of history if we can avoid it. The medium has changed many times since these ads first ran – radio, television, the Internet – but the human beings making purchasing decisions as consumers and businesses are still largely the same. Take the hard-won lessons of the past and apply them to your marketing today as it makes sense to do so, and you might indeed learn something new by studying something old.

For a large selection of vintage ads to browse through, check out the Early Advertising collection on Flickr.

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Filed Under: Content Marketing, Creative & Design, Strategy

4 ideas email marketers can learn from menus

December 14, 2011 By

Restaurant menu engineering is one of the hottest niche marketing fields there is. Marketing and psychology professionals spend extraordinary amounts of time and money engineering menus at restaurants to boost sales, upsell clients, and grow brand. Let’s take a look at a few simple tricks that you can import from the table to your email marketing program.

1. Add people!

Which looks more appealing to you?

Hot fresh oatmeal cookies – $4.99
Grandma Edna’s hot fresh oatmeal cookies – $4.99

It doesn’t matter whether Grandma Edna even exists. Adding some indicator that a human being is behind a product or service increases our feelings of affinity for it. How might you use this in a business context? Take a look at this promotion for a MacBook contest (hat time to John Wall):

Are either of these people named Jason? Maybe, maybe not. Does it matter? Not really.

2. Format for your crowd.

Which looks more appealing to you?

Hot fresh oatmeal cookies – $4.99
Hot fresh oatmeal cookies – $4.95
Hot fresh oatmeal cookies – $5
Hot fresh oatmeal cookies – 5

The way you choose to display prices can send subtle suggestions about your offering. Restauranteur Danny Meyer said that prices with common consumer goods endings like x.99 send a subtle signal that the item in question is cheap in all senses of the word. If your product or service is aiming for more than commodity status, examine how your pricing conveys that sense.

3. Check your upper right.

Restaurant menu engineers have noticed a peculiar eye tracking custom with diners: their eyes hit the upper right hand corner first, even in countries where the eye reads from left to right. No one’s quite sure why, but it’s worth testing your highest value offerings in the top left and top right of your creative to see which performs better for clickthroughs.

www.balthazarny.com/menus/dinner.pdf

4. Draw a box.

Visual design can be as simple as setting things aside. Calling attention to something on the menu can be as simple as putting a decorative border around it, and the more whitespace and offset you can use, the more it will stand out.

www.balthazarny.com/menus/dinner.pdf

Guess which item the restaurant wants you to buy. It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to use the exact same tactic in your email marketing creatives!

For more reading on how restaurants manipulate menus to increase sales, read these articles from NY Mag and the NY Times:

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Filed Under: Creative & Design

How to test landing pages

December 13, 2011 By

The flipside of testing your email marketing is to test the landing page or pages that you’re sending email traffic to. In one of our team meetings yesterday, WhatCounts employees wanted to share that there are terrific, free tools for doing landing page testing of any page on your website or blog. The gold standard of testing tools is Google’s free Website Optimizer. Rather than simply retype their tutorials, we’ve got a short video that introduces Website Optimizer below:

Integrating Website Optimizer with your email marketing is simple and easy. Set up your experiment first in Website Optimizer, test it to make sure it’s delivering the variations you want to test, then send traffic from your email campaigns to your testing page.

For a comprehensive list of video tutorials, check out the Google Website Optimizer training center.

As a bonus, Website Optimizer and Google Analytics can co-exist peacefully, so you can even determine which traffic from an email campaign or A/B split test in email works best with the various Website Optimizer versions. You can do multi-layer, multi-variate tests in just a few minutes with the WhatCounts platform and Google Website Optimizer and find out what really converts for your digital marketing efforts.

Christopher S. Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Filed Under: Best Practices, Content Marketing, Creative & Design, Strategy

Send weather-related email marketing campaigns

November 16, 2011 By

Oh, the weather outside is frightful… so use it to your advantage!

If people are stuck inside on a rainy or snowy day, they are likely curled up on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate and their laptop. What better time to offer them a discount? One of the keys to successful email marketing is relevance, and your weather-related email is sure to stand out in the inbox when your subscriber sees a subject line of, “IT’S SNOWING! Get the gear you need” or “Snowed In? Shop From Home & Get 20% Off – Today Only!”.

It’s been a wet winter so far on the East Coast, and my co-workers and I have received a few weather-related emails that made us take notice.

Rainy Day Special

On a rainy day, most of us want to stay inside where it’s dry and warm. Unfortunately for Qdoba, a Mexican fast food chain, that means fewer customers will stop in to eat with them.

Qdoba took this opportunity to offer their email subscribers a “Stormy Weather $2 Off Special”. Senior Client Services Manager Michelle Oglesby originally received this email, and it was bad weather in Michelle’s area that day. Qdoba used the demographic information they had for subscribers, and they targeted only those subscribers who lived in areas with bad weather.

The special was only available for that day only, so it truly was a rainy day offer. They also encouraged subscribers to engage with them by requiring them to click through to access the coupon. Kudos to Qdoba on a great offer. (Click image below to enlarge)

Seize the Snow Day!

Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS) sent an email back in December, during one of the first snows of the season here in Baltimore. With a subject line of “IT’S SNOWING! Get the gear you need”, combined with the preheader “SEIZE THE SNOW DAY” and the excitement of that first snow, we took notice. Not only did the subject line grab our attention, the preheader further prompted subscribers to open the email and act on their call-to-action. It was literally snowing outside when we received this email, and it was a great reminder to purchase our outdoor gear for the season.

While EMS didn’t offer a one-day discount to further prompt recipients to make a purchase, the complete relevance and timeliness of this email made it hard to miss, and not get excited and click through to shop. (Click image below to enlarge)

*Bonus: I also like how they remind the recipient of the nearest store, so if we’re feeling adventurous, we can head out and shop in-store.

Snowed In? Shop from Home & Get 20% Off!

What’s one email that made Client Services Manager Elena Hekimian convert? Urban Outfitters’ recent personalization based on location and weather. In “4 Email Marketing Creatives That Made Me Convert”, Elena talks about a recent Urban Outfitters email where she explains:

I live in Baltimore, which just happened to receive some snow last night. It would appear that Urban Outfitters knew this as they cleverly sent me this email offer for being “snowed in”. I don’t know for sure that they used this much logic, but I’d like to think they only sent this campaign to those subscribers to have shipping or billing addresses that received snow last night. Also, in my email marketing dreams, I would imagine that they sent this to me because I’ve only converted on previous email campaigns within the past year when I’m given a coupon code. Maybe only in my wildest email marketing consulting dreams, but either way, I just purchased some discounted jeans!

With a subject line of “Snowed In? Shop From Home & Get 20% Off – Today Only!”, and a preheader of “Enter SNOWEDIN at Checkout to Get 20% Off!”, recipients were prompted to open the email and take action. (Click image below to enlarge)

19″ of Snow Means 19% Off

Barnes & Noble recently sent an email with the message “Nothing Stops a New Yorker! Especially when there’s a deal involved. 19″ of Snow Means 19% Off”.

B&N then prompted subscribers to “Put your snow boots on” and get an in-store coupon, or if they’d prefer to shop online, it was “Stay in your socks”, directing them to shop BN.com.

While I love that B&N used this snowy occasion to offer a discount to their subscribers, it seems as though they offered the discount to all subscribers in honor of New York receiving the snow. It would probably be more meaningful they segmented by city or zip code and targeted the email to people in that specific area as the examples above show. At the same time, no one is complaining about a 19% off discount! (Click image below to enlarge)

If you want to use weather in your email marketing campaigns, here are a few tips:

  • Collect subscribers’ demographic information. At opt-in or via subscriber preferences, ask subscribers for their location. Be sure to tell them why you’re asking for this information and how you’ll use it.
  • Segment your database to target subscribers. Use the data you’ve collected to target subscribers in certain areas. This can be easily done in WhatCounts’s Publicaster (or the email marketing software you use).
  • Monitor the weather & act quickly! Be sure to monitor the weather forecast, so you’re prepared to send your email as soon as the weather starts. That way subscribers receive your promotion early and have time to act (if there are time constraints)!

Have you received weather-related emails worth sharing? Let us know in the comment below!

Amy Garland
Client Services Manager, WhatCounts
@amygarland

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Filed Under: Best Practices, Creative & Design

Uncommon Goods Case Study: Fighting Winter Blues with Email

November 15, 2011 By

The following is a guest post by WhatCounts client and friend Amanda O’Brien, otherwise known as @amanda_pants. Amanda is the VP of Marketing at Hall Internet Marketing located in Portland, Maine. She is a self-proclaimed email nerd and is the organizer of Social Media Breakfast Maine. She also sometimes plays the role of a runner.

___

I recently heard that the average person receives 5,000 opt-in emails a year. I am an email nerd; I think my number is probably higher than that. That is why when I see a good, I mean really good, email marketing piece, I stop and take notice.

Uncommon Goods is an online store that sells unique (and fun) items. I have been a fan of them for a long time. This year my husband was pretty excited to get their Ski Wine Rack for Christmas. They have always provided a unique online shopping experience, and lately they have really stepped up their email marketing game.

When Amy from WhatCounts recently asked on Twitter if anyone had seen any great email campaigns lately, I knew who to point out. The Uncommon Goods “9 ways to give winter the cold shoulder” email was still sticking out in my head as a well thought-out and executed marketing piece.

4 Things Uncommon Goods Did Uncommonly Good with their Email

1. Got my attention with the subject line

“9 ways to give winter the cold shoulder” was the subject of the email. I live in Portland, Maine. I am a fan of winter, but this time of year, winter gets old. Winter blues set in and hibernating sounds like the best plan of action. Relevance is key. Tying in their messaging with the season was great. The more relevant the email, the better your subscribers will respond.

2. Entertaining

Humor is a great way to connect with your audience. In the Uncommon Goods email, they listed one symptom of the winter blues, and then prescribed a product that they sell online (I think my favorite was Monochromata).  The symptoms were made up, but they were clever. The solutions they offered were really funny. For example: Frigidosis symptoms were chattering teeth and the refusal to leave bed because of a broken heater. The solution was one of their playful pocket flasks to warm yourself from the inside. They were witty and I appreciated the humor.

3. Ignored “best practices” and kept their audience in mind

The only thing more important than following best practices is knowing what your audience wants and delivering it. Uncommon Goods knows their audience. The email was pretty image heavy, which can be a best practice no-no, in case someone doesn’t load images in their email. The Uncommon Goods subscriber is probably a very visual person. The unique images and illustrations really sold the product and the company no matter what the rule book says.

4. Unique calls-to-action

As I mentioned before, I get a lot of email. A typical call-to-action is a “buy now” link or a “view more products” button. Uncommon Goods used calls-to-action to drive people to their site to view more items, but in a clever way. Instead of saying “view more products”, they grouped products together to match the email messaging  and added descriptive links. When they prescribed a colorful scarf for a case of “Monochromata”, they included a link to “view more bright accessories“.  That reflects the message and tone of the email and is more clickable than “view more products now”.

Overall, the email from Uncommon Goods was fun, relevant, entertaining, and really well put together. If you need another example, they also put out a Cats vs. Dogs email the following week. By really knowing their audience and delivering timely, targeted messages, they are a perfect example of a well done email marketing campaign. I look forward to seeing them in my inbox, and that is Uncommon these days.

What are you doing to provide value, humor or information to your subscribers so that they are looking forward to seeing YOU in their inbox?

Amanda O’Brien
Vice President, Marketing, Hall Internet Marketing

18 Ways book cover
Audience to Evangelist
Learn 18 different ways to find and grow your email marketing and social media ROI! Promote email with social, social with email, learn how to set up a Facebook Page for email subscriptions, and much more. Download the free eBook now.
 Lifecycle email marketing is one of the hottest buzzwords in digital marketing, but how can you make it work for you? Download our free eBook and learn 5 lifecycle frameworks plus practical applications to your email marketing program.

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Filed Under: Creative & Design, Guest Post

25 Email Design Tips for Better Email

October 25, 2011 By

How can I make this email look killer, but killer in every different type of email client?

When designing an email creative, it can be a headache with more than 50 different email clients that your subscribers could be using, not to mention their multiple ways of viewing emails. This makes ensuring that your email renders the way you’ve intended nearly impossible.  We don’t have all of the answers, but below are several tips that are sure to help any email designer get close to perfection:

Overall design

  1. Keep email width under 650 pixels. This is a general rule as the preview pane for many email clients doesn’t get much wider than that.
  2. Design above the fold. It’s okay for an email to scroll. It’s not okay for a recipient to need to scroll.
  3. Place key elements at the top, above the fold. By top, the first 300 pixels are a good safe bet. The key aspects of the email include logo, call-to-action, navigation, primary subject matter, etc. 
  4. Keep it short. Don’t overload your email with content. Use the email as a tool to drive recipients to your website or landing page. Some people prefer to read large amounts of text in a web browser as opposed to their inbox. Give them a taste – a teaser – followed by a “Read More” type call-to-action. This will also give you a sense of what your readers are looking for when they follow through to your website and the content.
  5. Keep it simple. Don’t try and design a complex HTML masterpiece and expect everyone to see it the way you hope they will. The more difficult your email is to code, the more difficult it will be to see across the many email clients.

HTML Do’s and Don’ts (Mostly Don’ts)

  1. Hand-coded (simple) emails are best. Many simple HTML editors often insert a ton of extra code that makes most email clients choke and cause your email to display poorly. Avoid the “Save as Webpage” feature of Microsoft Word. Dreamweaver is usually okay, but having a working knowledge of HTML allows you to check for code that shouldn’t be there.  BlueGriffon is a free alternative to Dreamweaver and is available for PC and Mac platforms.
  2. Use tables. In the email world, designing with tables is one of the foolproof ways to ensure your email will render correctly across all email browsers.
  3. Avoid Javascript and/or other dynamic scripts. Even if a spam filter happens to let your email through untouched, most email clients will not allow these scripts to function. No need to get fancy; just avoid them.
  4. Avoid excessive Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Many email clients strip out CSS or over-write it.  The use of CSS is acceptable in email, but there are many strict guidelines you need to follow. Simple attributes like text style, color, and sizing are usually okay and acceptable across the majority of email clients. When you start defining spacing, margin, and other positional elements with CSS you will run into problems.  Always use inline styles. Do not attach style sheets or define all of your attributes in the <head> section on your HTML. For an in-depth look at what works and what doesn’t in regards to CSS, email, and the various browsers, visit The Email Standards Project.
  5. Avoid nested tables. A lot of times they are unavoidable, but we recommend using them sparingly. Some email clients, Lotus Notes and Netscape Messenger in particular, may not render them correctly.
  6. Avoid complex colspans and rowspans. Some email clients will choke on these and they can make content revisions a nightmare for the next edition. Use them sparingly.
  7. No body attributes. Most applications strip out everything that’s not in between the body tags.  So if you want to make a background green, do it with a stretch table background.
  8. Don’t embed images. Host images on your website or let your email service provider host them for you. Then make sure your image paths point to the full URL: (i.e. http://www.yourwebsite.com/yourimage.jpg).
  9. Avoid 1×1 pixel spacers. Some spammers use them and they may get your email flagged.

Images

Don't be this guy...

  1. Don’t use images for important content such as headlines, links, or calls-to-action. Or if you do, make sure there is an HTML backup. Chances are images may be turned off making the key elements of your email useless.
  2. Use alt text for your images. Also, don’t hesitate to use the alt text to say something compelling about the subject matter like “see this motorcycle in action.”
  3. Use image widths & heights. Defining these attributes help to maintain the basic structure of your email when images are turned off.
  4. Optimize image sizes. Make sure your image file sizes are as small as you can get them without losing their visual integrity. Large images should be cut up into smaller, more downloadable sizes. This helps to reduce download times.
  5. Avoid background images. This one is pretty simple. Many email clients will not render background images at all.

Text Content

  1. Include an even balance of images and text. If an email campaign is sent as one image and the user has images turned off, they won’t see your message at all.  It also increases the risk of being marked as spam.
  2. Avoid gimmicky words. Phrases like “Act Now” or “Special Clearance” or even “Click here” sometimes trigger spam filters. If you need to use them, try putting them in a graphic.
  3. Avoid invisible text. This is another trick spammers use and is often a red flag for spam filters.
  4. Make it compelling. A no-brainer, but often overlooked. The more compelling your text is the greater the likelihood that your recipient will be less likely to hit the delete button, and more likely to click your call-to-action.
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