6 Tips for Designing an Engaging Email

A successful email marketing campaign shouldn’t be measured by the volume of distribution, but whether your consumers are interacting with your message. Combining the right content with an attention-grabbing subject line and a clean design can really improve consumer engagement. Increase interaction with your subscribers once your email is opened with these helpful tips:

1) Prime real estate is “above the fold.” Assume that a subscriber with a 1024×768 screen resolution will only see the first 300-400 pixels without having to scroll, so use this space wisely. Your most engaging content should go here to encourage your subscriber to interact with the communication.

2) A clear call to action. Something for your subscriber to act upon is critical to measuring engagement with your message. Make sure that your call to action is obvious enough that a subscriber won’t miss it, or be confused about what action to take from your email.

3) Keep it simple. Avoid overloading your email with too much information and/or images. The more that is crammed into a message, the more visually confusing it becomes for the subscriber. The subscriber should be able to scan the message easily, understand its contents and engage in the call to action.

4) Layout and branding are consistent. It’s important to keep your design consistent with every deployment, and even between message types so your email is easily identifiable by the subscriber. If a subscriber doesn’t recognize your email as something they opted-in for, they will most likely not engage with your message and could even perceive it to be SPAM – hurting your sender reputation.

5) The message is there, even if the images are not. The consumer should be able to clearly identify the purpose of your message, without having to download images. Try to keep the most important points of your message within the copy, not the images. If it’s necessary to display information in image form, remember to include alt tags that will appear in the absence of the image.

6) Put your design to the test! Test your message with a variety of email service providers and Internet browsers. If you don’t have access to a testing tool such as Litmus or Pivotal Veracity, you can test your layout the good, old-fashioned way by sending your email to various test email accounts. And don’t forget mobile!

Want to confirm that your new email design will improve engagement? Consider usability testing which can give you an inside look into how your subscribers are interacting with your email. This way, you can refine your email template(s) to ensure they are user-friendly and effective.

By: Jennifer Timmerman

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