Email Marketing Newsletter Design

Social media sites are all the rage right now which means many people are diverting their attention from email newsletters to things like Twitter and Facebook. Spending time on social media is not only a sound business decision but you can see real return from it. That doesn’t mean that we should be ignoring our email newsletters.

For too long people have been chasing email newsletters hoping to see real movement for their sales. Many have now abandoned their newsletters because they feel they can see more action in social media. Too many people confuse endless chatter with actionable/meaningful conversations. I’m not saying to ignore social media but you need to focus on your email newsletter.

If you haven’t been seeing the action you’ve been hoping for on your email newsletters then you’re either doing something wrong or you need to change things up a bit. Change the layout, make it easy to navigate, think of how much extra time in a day you have to read email newsletters. Take that and apply it to how you layout your email. Update your design, if you’ve been using the same design for more than a year than it’s stale, you don’t like buying a car that has the same look from the 80’s, you’re customers need to be reminded that you’re still alive.

Along with your design you need to address your font choice. I’m not saying you need to become a typographer or a designer becoming passionate about fonts. However, you need to either limit the amount of different fonts you use or consider expanding if you’re only using one. Remember, you want to guide the reader through your newsletter having them read what is most important at the right moment. Fonts can influence people, making them think more or less of certain topics almost solely due to font choice. Think about this the next time you do a product comparison, the lesser would have a font that devalues the product, while your product would have a commonly used font that is associated with higher-end brands.

A picture can say so a great deal about your company. So why use old clip art or out-of-date stock photography, what people see in a picture is often how they will associate the work you perform. With so many stock photography sites out there, consider dropping some cash on stock photography that makes your company look high-class.

I know that for most companies it’s difficult to switch to something new, that’s why we suggest doing A/B testing. A/B testing allows you to test both designs simultaneously within one delivery. This information will help guide you in what new changes are working and what is not. Measurement is one of the most important aspects of business, don’t forget to apply it here. Once you have the stats in hand, do something! Too many companies will take the numbers from one email and hope for better numbers next time. If you aren’t making changes based on the numbers than you are wasting not only opportunities but your time, leaving your competition one step closer to crushing you.

Email newsletters are just as important now as they once were, even more so now due to spam filtering. If your email is passing spam and getting opened then that means people actually want to hear from you. Give them something worth reading, stop hoping for sales from lazy email newsletters. Up your game, your competition has.

Image taken by Joey Rozier.