Design Your Email for Delivery & Response

In my last post I briefly described a number of steps you can take to help ensure your email is both delivered properly and garners a strong response.  Today I want to take a closer look at one of those steps: designing an email with delivery and response in mind.

This is a very broad topic, that covers everything from the From Label to images to HTML.  So I’ll stop wasting space with this opening and dive right into the details:

From Label & Subject Line

The From Label should almost always be the name of your organization.  It’s important that your recipients be able to immediately recognize the email is from a person or company they know - otherwise they’re likely to glance right over the email without opening it or could potentially even report it as spam.

To illustrate this point: I belong to a non-profit organization here in San Francisco and they send me a few email updates every month.  However, I didn’t notice these emails for weeks after my initial sign-up, because instead of using the name of their organization as the From Label, they used the names of various high level people in the organization. 

I realize that they were likely doing this to make the emails seem more personal, but it didn’t matter how personal they were being as I looked right over their emails until one of the subject lines finally clued me in that the messages were from their organization.  Speaking of which…

The Subject Line is essentially the headline for your email.  Keep it as short, descriptive and interesting as possible (easier said then done, I know).  A few tips:

• Try to keep it under 45 characters long.  Many email clients cut the subject line off at or around 45 characters, so going over this number can lead to many of your recipients not being able to view your entire subject. 

• Don’t write a misleading subject.  Doing so is questionable from a legal standpoint and will also cause subscribers to stop trusting your messaging - use a misleading subject line now and people won’t believe the great subject you use in the future.  The subject should describe the actual content or purpose of the email.

• Don’t use ALL CAPS or overuse punctuation!!!  This makes it look like your email is screaming for attention, which can both annoy your recipients and make your message more likely to get picked up by a spam filter.

Message Content

Plan for the Preview Pane - Make sure that your call to action or some of your interesting content will show up if the recipient views your email in their preview pane.  The average pane is 600 pixels wide by 200 pixels tall, but that is going to vary by recipient since the preview pane is adjustable.  So plan to have easily digestible content at the top of the page that will drive the recipient to take action or read more.

Use Short Blocks of Copy - Avoid writing long paragraphs that are difficult to scan through.  Use short paragraphs and bullets to make your points and call to action pop out.  If you do write long paragraphs, highlight words and phrases within each paragraph that highlight what you’re going on about.  That way a recipient can quickly scan your message and determine if they want to do anything with it. 

Always remember that - in most cases - recipients aren’t going to sit down and read your entire message.  They need you to show them where, why and how they should take action.

Provide Numerous Links - Don’t just link back to your website once or twice - make it easy for people to take action by sprinkling links throughout the message.  Turn all your images into links, too - images are big and pretty, making them tempting to click on.

Follow the 80 / 20 Rule - This is a simple rule of thumb that says your email content should generally be no more than 20% images and no less than 80% text.  Measure this simply by looking at the email and roughly estimating how much of your message real estate is covered by text or images.

Why should you follow this rule?  Mainly because many email clients initially block images when an email arrives in the inbox, requiring the recipient to click a button or a link to turn the images on.  Relying too heavily on images can mean much of your content will be initially invisible to many recipients.  A very image heavy email can also be more likely to end up in a spam folder.

Optimize Your Images for Email - The smaller the file size of your image, the faster it will load.  Be sure to save your image for web use using an editor like Photoshop or to edit the image using the tools found in our Library (we always optimize images for web use when you edit and save in the Library).  The file size of an email image should generally be 25kb or smaller.

You should also provide alt-text for all of your images.  This back-up text will display in place of the image in many of those same email clients that block images.  Plus, if you have any blind subscribes using a screen reader to read your email, their screen reader will read the alt-text aloud.

Test - Not sure you’re getting the most from your campaigns with the content you’re using?  Test!  Try different kinds of layouts and content to smaller segments of your list to see if you get higher response rates.  No form of marketing, including email, has a one-size-fits-all approach, so you can’t determine what will work absolutely best for you without trying different approaches. 

Any ideas or comments of your own?  Let’s hear ‘em in the comments!

Richard Huffaker, Education & Training Manager

Comments

[Sean]

The tools provided are pretty useful for sure. Honestly, I find that using a pretty generic Dreamweaver page with old school 'font size' tags, etc. show up best across just about any email client. We have experienced excellent click thru and even the lowest scroll items for videos get clicked thru the most. Video links are extremely powerful. Hope these tips are useful to someone.

[Richard Huffaker]

Hi Kim,

How you create the alt text depends on how you're building the email. If you're using our Canvas editor, then you can enter the alt-text on the Adjust Image page that comes up after you select an image to add to your email message.

If you're writing your own HTML, then you'll need to add the alt text to your images within the code itself. It should be written as part of your image source:

img src="mysite.com/mylogo.jpg" height="150" width="200" alt="Visit My Website"

[kim]

hello,
thank you for the tips. How do you create the Alt-text?

[Richard]

A useful subject to explore

As you suggest, I like to add many varied links in my newsletters. People love to 'dip in and out' of varied content and sites.

When viewing as emailed version of the newsletter these links open in the browser as an indipendent window, however, when someone choses to view my newsletter as a webpage links open in the same window, meaning that they leave the newsletter entirely.

So, (expecting really straightforward answer that i blindly missed :-) ), how to i create links that will open in a new window, therefore keeping the first browser window dedicated to the newsletter itself?

[Richard Huffaker]

Hi Elizabeth,

When you're naming the anchors, do you make the name all one word or do you use more than word (with spaces). I ask because Outlook has problems with anchor names that have spaces in them, so the solution - if this is the problem - would simply be to make sure there aren't any spaces in the names of your anchors.

[Elizabeth]

Thanks for a great post! I have a related question.

I notice that in your e-mails, the anchors (under "Also In This Issue") work perfectly in Outlook and when viewing the e-mail in a browser. When I've tried to use anchors, they work only in the browser. Have you had any experience with this? I'd love to get them working, as it's an easy way to get some attention-grabbing words in the preview pane.

Thanks for providing such a helpful blog! We've only recently started using VerticalResponse for marketing campaigns, and I'm having fun learning more about it.