Email Marketing sounds incredibly simple at first glance. But when you sit down and start to plan out it out you realize it that it’s incredibly more time consuming. For 2015 email marketing has been a large part of my daily worklife. Specifically in email conceptual design, integrating content, editing, distribution, developing target lists, scheduling, etc. I’ve research a variety of blog posts, as well as, Design and UX techniques that can be applied to email marketing.
Here are areas to take into consideration when designing your next email.
Planning
Working with subject matter experts on content
Understanding audiences
Designing content for eye tracking
Differences between paragraphs and headlines
Message and Design
Consistent message with all other assets
-Does your tone and message flow into all your marketing assets you have out there?
Making content more digestible
-Relates to eye tracking. You want your audience to take in bite-size pieces of information when you have a large message to throw at them.
Proper use of spacing content
Visuals that relate to content
Are we meeting the end goal to this email?
-Call to Action, is there a purpose to this email? Need to make sure the user reads the email and does something.
Revision process
Review process
Asking questions
-Are we sending the message we intended?
-Will the customer click on the links we want them to?
-Have we spaced out the information to make them make a purchase if not today then tomorrow?
Final thoughts
Are you lists targeted? Scheduling? Are we measuring the conversion from the email through purchase? or contract signing(if B2B)? We will talk about them in Part 2 of email marketing.
Email platforms are not difficult to use
I have used Constant Contact, MailChimp and ExactTarget, hopefully many more. They all have different quirks, the good and bad, and . The most important part is doing you have metrics to analyze and OPTIMIZE!