Welcome to the anatomy of an email in 3 minutes or less, a WhatCounts Microwebinar. We’re going to take a quick look at one of our newsletters and walk through the 6 areas of the email, with tips for each of the areas.
Pre-header: Establish alternatives
The role of the pre-header is straightforward: give people an immediate alternative if the email isn’t showing up in their inboxes correctly. It’s important to include this so that people can get to a working version of your email as quickly as possible.
Header: Establish brand
The header establishes the brand and identity of the email immediately. You see who it’s from with a clear graphic identity and provide links for people to get to know you better in a tight, compact “About us” box.
Side Bar: Call to action
The sidebar provides an immediate call to action in the above-fold area. This call to action is typically some kind of commercial solicitation designed to give an immediate opportunity to buy. Note that in ours we use a very bold button color and a photograph of people whose eye lines are aimed towards the call to action.
Share Items: Call to action
The share bar and share block work not only to visually break up the newsletter but also to provide an opportunity to share the newsletter on social networks. These days, inclusion of social sharing is nearly mandatory if you want to get your email to the most people possible.
Content: Value and call to action
The bulk of the newsletter is content of value. Note that stylistically, in our content we keep the blue hyperlink color as a visual indicator that this is a link which can be clicked. Throughout the content, we use large images to break up the text, creating a zig-zag reading pattern, and we incorporate large numbers of calls to action, including full-width ones. All images are clickable to ensure maximum action capture.
Footer: Expected elements
In the footer, we have everything that is expected of a newsletter including a clearly marked unsubscribe and our physical address for anti-spam law compliance.
This is, of course, only one kind of email, but by illustrating the six sections, we hope that we’ve given you some ideas of what to include in your own messages. As with everything, be sure to test and see what elements do or don’t work. If you find a section of your email that garners no clicks at all repeatedly, perhaps consider excluding it from your next campaign in an A/B content test to see if anyone misses it at all.
If you work at a company sending emails to 50,000 people or more each month and would like a free assessment like this of one of your email newsletters, please fill out the contact form and we’ll connect you with one of our business development managers.
Thanks for watching!
Christopher Penn
Director of Inbound Marketing, WhatCounts
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