You only get one chance to make a good first impression on potential customers, and, for many businesses, that one chance is the humble e-mail. Your initial e-mail contact with a potential customer or an existing customer can set the tone for your business relationship. It can be the difference between winning a customer - and losing them to the competition.
Unfortunately, far too many businesses underestimate the importance of proper e-mail design in capturing customers and encouraging continuing customer engagement and brand loyalty.
Here are a few design tips to make sure your e-mails get your message across:
Branding is everything: The most important property your company owns its brand image. Your brand image is your ambassador to the world and plays a crucial role in how your company, your brand, and your products are perceived by customers and potential customers. Your e-mail needs to conform to your brand image and to positively project that image in a friendly, professional way. All elements of your e-mails to customers – from logos, colors, fonts, and stylistic elements to the return e-mail address need to conform to your brand-image standards. Remember, brand is reputation, and reputation is everything.
Grab their attention: Most modern e-mail clients allow recipients to see not only who sent an e-mail and the subject line, but also the first two or three lines. Use this to your advantage by writing eye-catching subject lines and lead sentences guaranteed to engage the reader and encourage them to read your message.
Readability is crucial: When designing an e-mail message, keep in mind that your customers have limited time – and limited patience – to devote to hard-to-decipher e-mails. Keep your e-mails simple, direct, and clean by designing them for high readability. Vertical layouts, clean graphics, clear, easy-to-read fonts and ample white space help readers navigate your message with minimal fuss. You should also design your e-mails to be easily readable across a wide platform of devices, including phones and tablets.
Content is king: The best designed e-mail in the world will get zero response, and zero customer engagement, if it is not interesting. Your e-mail messages should be informative, interesting, and engaging, but not so information-heavy that they turn off potential customers. You should also avoid the temptation to go for the hard-sell – one call to action (CTA) is sufficient. More than will seem pushy and will turn away both existing customers and potential customers.
Small details count: Every element of your message is important, and this includes such relatively small details such as a ‘contact me’ button. For instance, the ideal size of a contact button should be a minimum of 44 pixels wide by 44 pixels tall to ensure readability on mobile devices. For even better readability, the contact button can extend across the bottom of the message.
Why getting an F in e-mail design is a good thing: Numerous eye-tracking studies – studies designed to analyze how people read and digest information on web pages, e-mails and other text-heavy materials – have conclusively shown the power of designing your content around the shape of the letter F. According to researchers, readers first read the top half of the page, forming the top of the F, before moving slightly down the page to examine the first horizontal half of the page, forming the middle of the F, before scanning down the left side of the page, forming the vertical line of the F. The distribution of information in your message should follow this pattern, with the most important information at the top of the message and bold headers and other information to guide them down the page.
Follow these simple guidelines to ensure that your e-mails to existing customers – and, equally importantly, potential customers – generate the interest and sales leads that you need to succeed. Successful e-mail marketing can be the secret weapon you need to take your business to the next level.
