The Aesthetics of Good Email Newsletters

An email newsletter (if used correctly) is one of the most effective means to communicate with new and existing clients. •Let’s take a quick look at some of the main reasons that makes email communication both effective and widely popular to marketers:

• Can be used to exploit or overcome seasonality
• Can generate immediate action and direct sales
• Provides information to drive offline sales and actions
• Increases and reinforces brand awareness
• Can be used effectively to launch new products and services and introduce them to customers
• Reinforces relationship with existing customers
• Increases sales
• Customer support or important customer announcements

Considering that you can do so much with email marketing, it is important that you put a little effort into the aesthetics of the actual content of the newsletter.  Here are a few useful tips on email aesthetics:

• Use animation only where necessary.  Don’t flash your customers away!
• Try to stick to global standard fonts.  Your fancy font may not appear as you had hoped on your customer’s client.
• Avoid white text on black (or very dark) backgrounds – it’s very hard to read.
• Don’t go overboard with font colours.  Stick to a basic colour scheme, but just don’t go crazy with too many colours and sizes of fonts throughout the newseletter.
• Have many working hyperlinks (clicks) in the body of your newsletter.  The more hyperlinks you have, the better the click through rate.  Studies have indicated that newsletters with more than 25 hyperlinks generally have a better click through rate than newsletters with few hyperlinks.
• Keep your ‘admin’ stuff away from the top.  The top of your newsletter is prime “real estate” space – don’t waste it on administrative details.  Move admin stuff to the bottom of your newsletter (i.e. Signature tag and subscription details)
• Make your message easy to read.  Present your information in bite-size chunks. Short and to the point.
• Ensure that your navigation is easy to use.  Avoid lengthy emails where the user has to scroll  left and right or up and down extensively to read the content.
• Try to stick to a maximum width of 500 pixels wide.
• Include a contents (e.g. ‘In This Newsletter) list that is hyperlinked, to the top of your newsletters.
• Put a catchy teaser in the top left ’sweet spot’ (usually seen by all preview pane types)
• Make sure your newsletter is ‘disabled images’ friendly. In other words, if the user has images disabled, make sure you have enough relevant text to support your message.  Don’t rely solely on images to get your message across.

Remember, you only have one chance to make a good first impression!