Best Practice - The Successful Email
A successful email is requires good design and interesting content. But targeting your audience, personalising the email and ensuring high delivery rate is just as important.
Check out the best tips from our experts below!
In this Article
Accessibility - Create reachable Content!
Accessibility is about creating convenience for your readers - reducing basic barriers to comprehension. Keep the accessibility aspect in mind in layout, font, images, links and buttons.
More than half open emails on a mobile device, make sure your content is mobile friendly! Here are some tips on how to make your email accessible and engaging to your readers.
Email content
Layout and Font
Make it easy to overview. Use short modules and have a clear focus.
Length - Do not too long with too many topics. Rather split into a series of emails.
Use web-based font to ensure your text is shown as expected. Fonts supported by the Email tool are found in the Inline text editor.
Images
Clickable - put a link and alt text to all images and logo
Make an impression - select images that enhances your message
Links and CTA buttons
Give links and buttons texts that invite to click.
Consider placement of links and buttons in the email.
Unsubscribe link should be visible and accessible to your readers.
Target your Audience
Use Data tags to personalize the content.
Segment the email content to target your audience better.
Segment your Subscriptions to stay relevant to your Profiles.
Subject line and Preheader
The subject line is the first impression in the inbox, so use it wisely!
Should it be more personal? An offer? Some tips? A warning? A promise?
Create a notion of urgency.
Avoid spam trigger words. For example "free", "money", "win" and "help".
A subject line should stay within 40-50 characters.
Preheader ideally 85-100 characters (text following the subject line in the inbox).
Design and Brand consistency
Keep your readers attention with a clean, straightforward design. Adapt the email design to your brand's design guidelines.
Here's our best advice to make an impression!
1. Brand signature colours
Your logo or brand name should always be at the top of the email. It's the first thing your recipients will see.
If your logo is blue and white, these colours should always be present in your email's design. Not only does this allow for consistent branding, but it simplifies the design process. You can also use these colours for the header and footer background to make a clear separation between the email's body and content.
2. Text size and font
For an email a font size of 14px is ideal. If your email is shorter, maybe two or three sentences, 16px might be even more effective for your Text Elements. Adjust the size according to the amount of text to maximise the impact of your message.
Fonts are crucial to your brand's identity and design guidelines. Some email clients may not support specific fonts, and will replace with a fallback option depending on the email client. Pick a web-based font supported by the Email tool (found in the Inline text editor).
3. Make a Statement with Images!
Select images for your Image element that pair well with the colour of the surrounding design to make them stand out. For example, if you add an image with a circular shape and a black background, change the background colour of the email to black to make the impression of a round image.
4. Image size and quality
Ideally, images should look good in all devices. Use the Preview option to check for any stretching or odd placements, and adjust Element size to really give your images impact. (keep the image size under 1MB)
Are your images of good quality? Avoid pixelated, low resolution images. Attention to detail will convey your brand positively to your recipients.
5. Email length
Go for those images that are essential to your brand, and keep the email's size accessible to most devices and internet connections.
6. Custom domain
Setting up a custom domain for links and system pages helps promote consistent branding in your email activities. Adjust links in your emails and system-generated pages to be a part of your domain (like web version and unsubscribe page).
Seeing your private domain, when hovering over and clicking the address, gives the Profiles a sense of trust and builds upon their relationship with your brand. Read more about Custom domain here.
💡Tip! Remember to use the Preview and test functions to see what the finished email will look like.
Deliverability
The delivery rate of an Email sending should be 100%, or close to it. A low delivery rate could be due to poor list quality, lack of authentication of your domain or spam trigger content.
We have many tips on how to improve delivery rate in the Deliverability article.