Dottourism.com

Top Email Design Tips

18 August 2011 | Kate Waite

There are lots of elements to your email marketing that you need to get right in order to maximise the effectiveness of your campaigns. When part of an integrated campaign, email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to engage your audience.

A timely reminder of your brand and products at a time when your audience are making decisions can deliver engaged visitors to your website or convert active conversationalists to your social media channels. This year we have been delighted with the results from client mailings, but there are many aspects of a successful campaign. We recently looked at techniques for improving the effectiveness of your email campaigns. One aspect that was worth of a blog post of its own is getting the email design right.

We have produced an infographic with our top email template design tips, downloadable as a PDF for you to keep as a handy reference.

Email design top tips infographic

The infographic includes our top best practice tips:

1. What text to include in the pre-header
2. Advice on your email header design
3. The importance of a well placed teaser / title
4. The length of your email copy
5. The importance of having a clearly defined objective
6. Integrating social media
7. Legal requirements

We also give a summary on things to avoid as well as our top technical tips for producing beautiful emails.

Examples of these tips in practice

WithinWarwickshire The email we sent out for WithinWarwickshire last month had a very high click through rate of 67.35% helped with very clear campaign objectives. A great offer or competition is always a good way to encourage click throughs and should be prominent on the email. We made sure that we announced the competition at the top of the email with a large “Enter Now” call to action.

Mahindra Travel Trade Our regular emails to the travel trade has helped increase knowledge of the Mahindra brand and 49% of click throughs on a recent email turned into an actual enquiry for further information from travel agents.

Colorado Email Our consumer based email for Colorado features a call to action button near the top with an attractive design that changes to match the seasons. It is good to use different images and colour themes so that consumers know that it is a fresh email, while retaining familiar elements and branding. STA Travel are an example of a company who do this well.

Sun Country Our email campaign for Sun Country was very conversion focused with the objective of building a new UK orientated database for the launch of their new route. The email achieved excellent click through rates – you can see screenshots on our case study page.

Dot Tourism We had to include our own email newsletter! We’ve received many favourable comments from the travel industry on the design and content of our monthly newsletter. Make sure you sign up to get it delivered to your inbox every month.

What next?

Our next post on email marketing will concentrate on getting your subject line right. Without a great subject line your recipients might never see your carefully crafted email so subscribe to the blog RSS to make sure you don’t miss it.