Email Design: Best Practices
What makes a good email design? You might have asked yourself this question countless times. But what is the answer?Unfortunately, there isn’t a definitive one.
Design is subjective; an opinion based on personal preferences and experiences. Take you and your partner for example, you would both have very different ideas and options about how you would decorate your house. Neither are right and neither are wrong, and in reality, the result will more than likely be a combination of each of your ideas.
The process behind developing the right email design is no different.
“Too many cooks spoil the broth”
Sound familiar? In most instances, there are likely to be several people involved in developing a new email design. However, too many opinions are likely to result in you going round in circles and finding yourselves back at square one. Remember that someone who has not been involved from the offset might not be on the same page and may cause confusion. That said, you should always seek the opinions of others when you have completed a select few designs to choose from.
Keep the customer at the centre
Although design is subjective, one thing you need to remember is that basing design decisions on personal preference is only going to get you so far. Asking your self the question “Is this right for the customer?” will always ensure you stay on track to achieving what you set out to. This is the most important aspect of email design, as you need to ensure you include the information that your target customer or segment will respond positively to. If the content is not of interest to them, then the design will become irrelevant.
“With great power comes great…” You know the rest
Teams without leadership are not as effective, especially in design. One member of the team needs to take the lead and have the final say. This would normally be the responsibility of the brand or marketing manager. Remember, the decision makers role is not just about having the final say, it’s to also keep the design process from getting caught up in the afore-mentioned spin cycle.
Don’t leave your specialists on the bench…Keep in touch
You might have spent hours, days, weeks or more sitting in meetings with your design team, coming up with your pinnacle email. So you want to make sure that this time and energy is not wasted by not communicating effectively outside of those meetings.
Quick emails here, post it notes there, even shouting across the room doesn’t really work that well! Come up with an effective system that works for everyone. This way all points or issues will be actively noted and dealt with in the effective way.
To Summarise:
• Give feedback as a group on a specific email design
• Draw visual annotations on the email itself, removing ambiguity in your feedback
• Easily identify who left feedback
• Archive comments for auditing purposes