5 Best Practices for Email Design that Get Attention

Once a recipient opens an email from your company, their decision to continue reading and responding to an offer will often be based on the first impression they receive, so you need to make sure it’s your best. A professional, eye-pleasing email design will have a significantly higher response rate. To make every impression count, here are five best practices to help ensure your emails look their best.

Responsive Design

With so many devices and screen sizes available it’s hard to predict whether a recipient will read your email on a smart phone, desktop or tablet. Using a responsive design ensures recipients will be able to view the email the way it is intended regardless of screen size. However, it is important to keep in mind that email designs containing small fonts and images will be difficult to view on devices with screens smaller than four inches. Medium and large size fonts and images on a light background work best.

Use high quality, lightweight images

To prevent recipients from having to wait for large images to download, it is best to use high quality images that are between 72 ppi/dpi and 96 ppi/dpi (pixels per inch/dots per inch) with a file size of approximately 100K or less. This will ensure a fast download regardless of the speed of their internet connection.

Leave plenty of “white” space

The “white” space refers to the areas absent of graphics, text and images. Email marketing campaigns that achieve the right balance have a more professional, crisp appearance which makes it easier for recipients to read the message and therefore take the desired action.

Include social media buttons

Encourage recipients to share the email content with their friends by including social media buttons in every marketing message you send. This will not only help boost subscribers to your email campaigns, but it can help increase sales as well.

Don’t forget the call to action

This may seem like a no-brainer, but plenty of email campaigns are sent without an effective call to action. A call to action should be simple and straightforward that asks the reader to take the desired action. The desired action may be to make a purchase, subscribe, learn more etc. The best calls to action are those that are in button form so that all the reader has to do is click.

Whilst there are plenty of free email design tools available, not everyone is an expert in graphic design. Therefore, consider outsourcing an email marketing design project to a professional. It can save valuable time and result in higher-performing emails.