E-Newsletter Design Tips

You don't want your newsletter or email to end up like this!

Recently a customer who was about to start a email newsletter for his company, in order to increase their direct marketing and get more unique visitors to their website, asked us at Archer to design a template for it. We have created many e-newsletters in the past, but usually they have simple layouts to accommodate the stringent rules email clients adhere to. The most notable and well known email clients are Gmail, Lotus Notes 6, Outlook 2007 and mac Mail, to name a few.

The difference with our client was that he wanted a fancier look for the newsletter. We tried to please the client all the while something told me we would have issues. Pizazz! and WOW! get lost in translation when it comes to email marketing if you don’t do it correctly. Some of these fancier looking designs you can achieve on websites cannot be done for email because they get blocked by very finicky email clients. It is not a good feeling to design a beautiful piece only to find out that no one is seeing it. Plus, creating something that works for one email client, may not work for all, and you end up compromising with a very boring e-newsletter or email. A designer’s conundrum… beauty vs visibility. If they can’t see the forest why decorate the tree? (Hey! I just made that saying up and it is so true).

Here is the flip side: If you know what you CAN do, a good designer can make your email work AND look awesome! I did some research and came across solutions where we could give our client the “WOW!” factor and still get it through to their customers. Here are some that stood out the most to me…

First of all, designing for email marketing is not the same as designing for the web. Where as website browsers keep evolving, email clients seem to be going in the other direction, thus making a lot of emails look like nothing is there. Or the email is filled with a bunch of question marks that frankly, I don’t even bother with, because it is too much work to even try and let the email program view the image. Most people would just ignore the email entirely, and there goes your carefully thought out email blast or e-newsletter… In the trash!

Less is more when it comes to email design. I just read a very good article from Campaign Monitor titled “Email Design Guidelines” where they go through step by step on the most basic rules. A good quote from the article that gives you a hint of hope that your email will be viewable is this: “While it’s not without its challenges, rest assured it can be done. In my experience the key is to focus on three things. First, you should keep it simple. The more complex your email design, the more likely is it to choke on one of the popular clients with poor standards support. Second, you need to take your coding skills back a good decade. That often means nesting tables, bringing CSS inline and following the coding guidelines I’ll outline below. Finally, you need to test your designs regularly. Just because a template looks nice in Hotmail now, doesn’t mean it will next week.” Amen to that!

The article itself gets into the actual coding, and may be a bit overwhelming to some that really don’t deal with the code itself. So for the benefit of non-coders, I will try to explain in simple terms what it all means.

Background images will probably be replaced with solid color. If you’d like to reach maximum email client compatibility, you (or your designer) should avoid positioning any elements above any other graphic element – like large images – because of issues with css properties support in email clients. The email client will remove the background image and replace it with a solid color or nothing at all. So images or items floating on top of other images are a no-no.

No repeating backgrounds. Let’s say you wanted a fancy wood grain background that gets repeated throughout the email like many do in their websites. This would also disappear because of the same rule above. So you are better off with solid colors.

No transparent images. Transparent images will also cause problems because they combine with the background so the email client would treat them as a floating image and they could disappear or get the dreaded question mark. They could be faked only if they are treated like a picture, but since email clients tend to move things around, it would simply be better to stay away from that.

Avoid fancy fonts. Unless they are treated like an image, your best bet is to use web friendly fonts that everyone has in their system like Helvetica, Arial, Verdana or Times. Why? Because if your intended receiver does not have Arno Pro Bold Condensed in their computer, most likely the email will revert to one of the fonts I just mentioned and break your design. I can hear moans right now… this is the worst travesty of web designers. I know. All websites are doomed to have the same fonts, but there is nothing worse than things changing on you without your consent. And if they can’t read your newsletter or email, what good does a fancy font do?

Test your design. Often. As mentioned in the article above, you need to test your design to see if it can work in different email clients. There are programs to do this and your designer should be aware of this tool. It will show you a snapshot of how your email will look and show you if things disappear or not. It is an excellent way to fool proof your design. But note that things change constantly and if you have had a certain layout for your newsletter that has been in use for a while, it would be a good idea to test it again every few months to see if it is still as visible as before.

Use a reliable email marketing software. It is one thing to send email to your mom from your own computer, and another when sending an email with commercial or marketing intentions in mind. This is a touchy subject that gets into the murky world of CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) legalities. There are many rules that circle around marketing through email and they are covered in the article “Complying with CAN-SPAM laws” from Campaign Monitor if you want to read more. Things like double opt-in, unsubscribe links, valid reply-to addresses, legitimate from name and other issues can be covered when using a reliable email marketing software. Some of the most well known are MailChimp, Benchmark, Campaign Monitor. These services are easy to use and are very cost effective when used wisely.

It would be also wise to say that when using the email marketing providers, it can also hurt you if you go into a email campaign without thorough thought to your target audience, the branding of your company, and how you present yourself. It should look professional because email marketing is very direct and you wouldn’t want your first impression to your client to be a bad one. For a true professional presentation and great results, always consult a professional interactive marketing agency  like Archer Communications, Inc.! But, even if you don’t use us, imagine those disappearing images, broken text, question marks, in an email you receive, and remember what you (or I) would do with an email like this… Yep… Send it to the trash!

By: Michelle Martorell – Creative Director, Archer Communications, Inc.