The Commandments of Email & Newsletter Design; an interactive infographic & checklist for creating exemplary emails.

Most often designers are unable to battle with the rising need of impeccable email design template. Most marketers today are expanding efforts on spick and span email campaign that attracts a lot of opens and clickthroughs. It is difficult to capture the audience’s attention unless the design is really attractive. Design can be attractive only when it follows the design best practices.

Email & Newsletter Design Best Practices infographic comprises useful information on how well one can design an email. The main topics covered within this infographic include the Mobile Email Design Considerations, Important factors to consider while creating Header and Pre-header, Email Body, Content, Footer etc. Uplers hope that this infographic will be of utmost use to the Email communities from around the world.

Now, lets take a deep dive of the email design best practices mentioned in the infographic pertaining to the Envelop design, Pre-header and Header design, Email layout, Copy & Body Content, Footer design and Mobile Optimized Emails.

Brand Optimization: From Line, To field and Subject Line are the key components to optimize your Brand through Email. From name should be identifiable. To Address should be personalized and the subject line should limit to 35 characters. Subscribers decide to read or delete an Email within 3 seconds. Make sure you make the most out of these 3 seconds.

Pre-header and Header: Here, we will consider elements like the snippet text, Johnson’s box. The snippet text should be well aligned with the subject line as few clients show preview text, pulled out from the first few lines of email content. Johnson Box top is the top most space in an email ideally 400X300 Pixels, with the height of the header set at around 150 Pixel. Drop a link in the box or above it to for your online version of an email.

Email Layout: Email Layout needs to be really eye candy. Email width: should be 500 to 650 pixels with a vertical layout preferred over Horizontal. It is advisable to use text and images both are used in right proportion with a Table of content if lot is to cover in the email.

Body and Content: The fact to use short sentences and paragraphs is reinforced. Designers should distinguish content sections using design elements like spacing and dividing lines. It suggests using bold typeface and sub-headers to make certain words stand out with web-safe standard fonts keeping the Body copy font size: 14 pixels & Title Font Size: minimum 22 pixels.

Footer: It is advisable to put the Unsubscribe button upfront and easily clickable. Social sharing links and/or ‘Forward to a Friend’ options are a must add. Organization’s contact details should also be included in the footer space.

Mobile Optimized Emails has to be restricted to single column template, using techniques like responsive and scalable coding standards as 42% of all email is now opened via mobile and 43% of mobile email users check email 4+ times per day. Mobile emails should have tappable calls to action of minimum size 44 x 44 pixels and Mobile Email width of 320 to 480 Pixels.

Avoid: Flash or Ajax functionalities, background images layered with text etc.

Use: an alt text to an image that provide sense to the viewers even with images off as in case an email does not display correctly, 69,7% will delete it immediately.

Hope the above listed best practices would help you build up your Email Design and Newsletter Design in an impeccable way and in turn increase your ROI.