If you are thinking about doing an Email Marketing campaign you should consider that the design is as important as the subject line you choose and the content of the mailing.

Every email template must meet certain elements to ensure the success of your marketing campaigns. Below, we share some tips for the design of your email templates are really successful.

Template design

The first thing to take into account is the branding, which besides generating a visual coherence between all the pieces of communication, offers the guarantee that they recognize our brand immediately.

The second item to consider is the “Layout” (structure) according to the message. With respect to this point we can differentiate three types of Layout in Email Marketing campaigns:

• Newsletters.
• Promotional Flyers.
• Institutional communications.

According to a study conducted by MicroMass Communications, most customers preview their incoming mail in a window measuring 638×86 pixels on average.

Although it sounds incredible, most people don’t see beyond the initial 100 pixels of each email. This means that your template should not exceed 638 pixels wide. In fact, the standard and what we recommend in Fidelizador is 600 pixels wide.

We must always take into account the time we have to plan the campaign. You must include the estimated time not only to create the content and design of the campaign, but also the time we have to make the layout and testing.

Proportion: ideal size and weight of images and text

If we abuse the images there is a better chance that our campaign will end up in the spam folder. For this reason it is best to achieve a balance, where the content has a 60/40 relationship between images and text (read more about this topic, here).

Most email clients don’t support inserted images or very heavy images. This is why you must host your images on a server, calling them from the design with absolute addresses.

If we want to ensure a good reception of our mailing, it is vital to take care of the weight of the images and optimize them for web. If we incorporate to our design an image of 300 dpi the only thing we will achieve is that the loading time is too long. On the other hand, we can show the same image at 72 dpi, thus shortening the waiting time of the user.

As for the text, it doesn’t matter how good your content is. The user won’t read it all, as he will scan the content in less than a minute.

We recommend that you present the content with large relevant headers and a short paragraph that has a button pointing to your website, so that the interested user can read the entire content.

As a summary:

• The weight of the images should not be excessive.
• Typographic bodies should not be less than 9px.
• The main actions should not be left out of the first view of the Campaign.
• Do not use more than 4 or 5 lines of text in each paragraph.

Template Layout

We must use tables for the layout of content and not div’s. The only way for our mailing to have a structure is by using tables.

Div’s are really useful, but in website design. If we use them in mailing, we will not be able to align our contents.

In order to format the content of our mailing, it is necessary to define it within the tables or TD; it is not recommended in the header of our HTML, and never in separate style sheets.

When it comes to developing content

All content is created with the intention of being read and hopefully shared. Try to capture the interest of your subscriber through attractive messages and non-imperative “call to actions”. The psychology behind the action button has very interesting theories regarding the use of colors and catch phrases.

Also, we recommend you to include no more than 3 promotions within an email, with concrete information and strong “call to actions”.

Without a doubt, you can achieve a positive reputation by respecting the tone of communication of the messages. This point is key and influences the decisions that the designer must make when illustrating and diagramming communications.

Examples of good practice

A promotional flyer from Apple: A strong CTA (call to action) stands out and uses the presence of texts with standard fonts for secondary promotions.

A promotional Flyer of the company Skype: The ability to achieve a clean and attractive design with the presence of images only in the header stands out.

For your next mailing template designs, besides paying attention to the proportion of images and texts, we recommend you to use a short, pleasant and direct content. Don’t forget the importance of the “call to action” and the time destined to the layout and testing.