How to Engage Your Email Subscribers All the Way to the CTA
Ecommerce email subscribers receive email after email each day. Have you ever thought about why you choose to finish reading one email and delete the next? We tested these five simple tips and tricks to keep in mind when designing and planning emails.
Guide Your Subscribers
Guiding your readers is the first and most important rule to follow when designing an email for your brand. When your subscribers open up an email, they want to immediately know what information that email is going to offer. So, tell them! Grab their attention with an interesting and large heading and intriguing graphics. Let them know why you’re emailing them and convince them to keep reading.
From there, design your email layout to guide your readers to each succeeding section. This can be done by using sections, graphics like arrows to point them onward, and proper typographic hierarchy (i.e. headings, subheadings, and body text). Guide your readers all the way down to the most important part of the email…the call to action! Whether the CTA is to finish reading a blog post or to retrieve an exclusive promotion code, the CTA is where the magic happens.
Stay Consistent with the Brand You’re Designing For
Yes, you want to grab the attention of your subscribers, but good email design is also about brand recognition. Push the limits creatively, but continue to use colors, imagery, and graphics that all complement each other and fit back in with the brand’s design strategy.
For example, if your brand colors are black and red, choose colors that complement those main colors, not a lime green that will clash and distract the reader from the point of the email. In order to call attention to a specific part of an email, use the brighter, more attention-grabbing color from the brand’s primary and secondary color palettes in order to make a button or header pop.
The same rule applies to graphics when designing an email. Keep the brand graphic and imagery styles consistent and create the graphics yourself so you can have full control over the aesthetic.
Use Animated Graphics
Whether you have a lot of copy in your header, or you just want to add some additional attention to a specific section of your email, utilizing animated graphics is a great approach. Animation is one way to keep readers’ attention and keep them engaged in the content you’re presenting. Just be sure to keep the animations simple and small so that they will load correctly in the subscriber’s inbox and fit into the email platform you’re using. You can optimize these animated graphics by exporting them at a lower frame rate and by avoiding using large images in the animations.
Keep the Design & Information Simple
Remember, good design solves a problem and presents a solution to the person reading it.
Effective marketing convinces a consumer that they need the product or service you’re offering to solve their problem. An email is just one way to show your subscribers through simple and effective design that they need what you’re offering to them. Keeping it simple can be achieved by using icons and graphics instead of heavy text, and by keeping your messaging clear and concise textually and visually.
Email marketing also has the unique opportunity to present consumers with timely promotions and news. Keeping your design simple allows your subscribers to easily understand what it is you’re contacting them about and how long the deals will last.
Don’t Be Afraid to Get Creative
Lastly, never be afraid to step outside of the box and try something new to see how it performs with your audience. This could mean trying a new strategy for subject lines, or adding in a complementary color pop that goes with the subject your email is about. Email marketing is just one facet of marketing that has space for experimentation and evolution. Test the limits and find what works best for your brand!