Today’s post is on the 5 best practices to bear in mind when designing emails. Designing emails is more than aesthetic–it is also about how you get across your message, and in what sequence. The whole point of structuring and designing emails before you send them is to make the message as easy to understand as possible, as per your intentions, to your readers.

So without further ado, let’s start!

Best Practice #1: Be clear in your communication.

It is always best to be brief, succinct, and clear in your email communications.

Write the main message in a short and concise manner at the top of your email. Be direct and to the point. The long-form content can come later in the email because if people are not interested in the main topic, they would quickly lose interest. This might not just affect the current open rates of your email–it might also affect the future open rates of your email as readers start to associate your brand with boring content.

Most busy people read emails on the go, and if within the first three seconds they cannot understand what your email is about, they will simply ignore the rest of the email.

Best Practice #2: Write your call-to-action in an obvious manner.

Whenever you write an email, it is with intent. Therefore, write your call-to-action in a way that is as clear as possible. If there are hyperlinks, make sure they appear in a different color or in bold.

Sometimes some digital marketers don’t even include call-to-actions in their emails, which might leave your readers interested in the topic…and confused, because they do not know what to do next! This might lead to a massive loss of leads and defeats the purpose of sending the email in the first place.

Remember: Communicate with a purpose in mind.

Best Practice #3: Don’t overdo the images.

Emails with a lot of images usually take longer to load. While images are visually-appealing, they might make your email file size too big. Sometimes this might even result in your email images being blocked by the email server.

Also, digital marketers sometimes like to save their copywriting as images. However, this might be detrimental when their readers want to quote parts of the text and share them onto their Facebook or Twitter. Whether or not to express copywriting as text or image formats would be something digital marketers need to bear in mind while designing emails.

Therefore, use images with caution and purposefully! If you do use images, make them of smaller file size so that the loading time need not be that long.

Best Practice #4: Make it easy to unsubscribe to your emails.

This might sound counter-intuitive but you do not want your readers to associate your brand with anything negative or irritating. If for any reason your reader does not wish to subscribe to your brand anymore, simply let them unsubscribe easily.

For example, simply include an unsubscribe link at the bottom of your email. This will also ensure that your email does not pass off as a gimmick or spam.

Best Practice #5: Avoid any element that makes your emails look like junk mails.

There are always certain elements that trigger the thought of “This might be a virus or a junk mail” in the minds of your target audiences. Such elements include the excessive usage of capital letters and cliche phrases such as “As seen on TV”, “Make $$$$”, “Get rich fast”, etc.

While you want to make sure that the title of your email generates and captures the interest of your target audiences, avoid click baits as well. This is because you want your emails to come across as professional and valuable to your most loyal subscribers.

We hope you have enjoyed today’s post. Be sure to adhere to five of these best practices when designing your emails!