11 Quintessential
Email Mantras
To Rejuvenate Your Email Marketing Campaigns
The competition out there in the email marketing world is tough, no doubt. So, what is it that can make your emails more engaging and create a long-lasting impression in your subscribers’ mind?
Uplers in this infographic have consolidated the learnings from current trends observed in our consistent contribution towards producing visually attractive and engaging emails for customers worldwide. Get ready to dramatically boost your email engagement while providing a delightful user experience with these quintessential mantras from the Monastery.
Email Design Mantras
ProTips on How You Can Give Your Emails a Makeover
1. Interactive Email Design Elements
Interactive elements steal the show when it comes to escalation of open and click rates as compared to other components. Interactivity using CSS animation has been used by email marketers in their emails quite extensively in the recent times.
In a survey by Litmus, 46.3% companies expressed interest in using interactivity in their emails. Since your email message is visible only on user interaction, it is bound to peak the recipient’s curiosity.
- 10% - Used Interactive elements and interested
- 4.8% - Used Interactive elements and not interested
- 36.3% - Not used Interactive elements but interested
- 48.9% - Not used Interactive elements and not interested
Here are the most popular interactivity-based email elements, which will continue to rule hearts.
Fixed Elements Using Absolute-Positioning
Visual sorcery using parallax scrolling in webpages was inspired from arcade games of 1981 such as Moon Patrol. Taking cue from this, brands like Email on Acid and Penguin Random House made one of the email elements static such that while scrolling, only the background moves giving the effect of an illusion.
No need to imagine, click on the emails to experience the awesome effect.
Gamification using Keyframe Animations
In a study by Pew Research Center, it was found that 53% technology stakeholders think that by 2020, gamification will be a widespread concept.
In gamification, CSS-based animation is being used to make certain elements to transform inside the email; however, this requires user interaction. It is a perfect example of encouraging reward-based engagement.
Keyframe-based emails of 2017, which relied on user interaction observed 74% increase in CTR - uplers study.
Look at how SuperMailQuest has used a mini-game in their email to engage their subscriber base.
Click on the email to try your reflexes.
Flip Effect in Email
In this Easter email by Uplers, when the subscriber clicks on any of the eggs, there is a flip animation which reveals the secret discount behind it. This way the email engages the subscriber who is curious to know what he/she will win.
Sliders in Email
2. Animation-based Kinetic Emails
Sending static emails is now passé. Creating subtle movements in the email can provide the much needed makeover for your email design. Kinetic emails, to make an email dynamic, involve techniques such as CSS animation and transitions & time triggered display of content. Here are few variations of animation-based kinetic emails.
CSS-based animations
By putting a CSS animation on loop, certain elements of your email can be animated infinitely, and this is different from including an animated GIF as a CSS animation downright reduces the load time of your email. In the Christmas email sent by 1973 Ltd., they have animated the snowfall to emulate a storm.
Countdown Timers in Email
3. Accessible Email Designs
Accessibility in emails is about making your emails more inclusive. Accessible email designs empower your emails by removing barriers for your subscribers with disabilities, helping them access, perceive and interact with the content.
While brands have been creating accessible emails since long, accessibility seems like a trend that will push benchmarks in the years to come. Check out this awesome accessible email from Dreamforce:
Some basic steps to ensure that your emails are accessible
- Add proper alt text to images for screen readers
- Ensure contrast between text and background colors
- Add hyperlinks in different colors
- Minimize scrolling or make content keyboard accessible
- Optimize tables to preserve logical reading order in mobile device
Adding alt text in your emails doesn’t necessarily mean that your email loses its sheen in case images are disabled. Go for styling the alt-text which is displayed when images are disabled by an email client or don’t load.
While 62.9% of brands always use alt text, only 12.4% always style them.
With stylized alt text, brands can create pixel art designs which are sometimes more beautiful than the actual image.
Look how MotherCare made great use of stylized alt text to create an amazing design for those email recipients with email clients who keep images off by default.
4. Rise of Full-Width Emails
The 600px width range for emails was calculated for Windows Outlook working on a 1024px desktop monitor almost 10 years ago.
With display resolutions >800px in almost 59.3% of the wide range of display resolutions, it is safe to say that the rule of 600px email width is diminishing.
Email clients like webmail (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com, etc.) cannot display emails at full width, but emails can be designed for a width ranging from 700-800px minimum. This will also introduce the need for brands to use retina images more extensively.
Additionally, since most email clients support media queries and background images, you can either create a separate layout for full width or fill the white space with background colors as seen in the above email from Society6.
5. Instagram Feeds
Instagram users share an average of 95 million photos and videos per day.
Instagram, one of the most loved social media platforms, is nonetheless a pot of gold for email marketers.
Live Instagram feeds, one of the best examples of dynamic content, can be fetched into your emails. This can greatly increase the scope of interactivity as subscribers, tempted to see their Instagram post in your emails, shall interact with your brand more enthusiastically. Check out this email by The Body Shop.
6. Animated GIFs & Cinemagraphs
Taking GIFs to another level, cinemagraphs have been gradually picking up pace in the email design realm. The subtle movement shown in a cinemagraph is good enough to grab subscriber attention.
Look at how KLM Air France uses it beautifully in its promotional email.
Email Marketing Mantras
Every Marketer should Chant
7. Dynamic Content BlockS
For Improved Personalization
While 96% organizations feel that email personalization helps to improve email marketing performance, another study states that 77% marketers believe that it is essential to include real-time personalization in emails.
Like we know, customizing content based on developed customer persona such as location, age, sex, purchase history, user engagement, device info, etc. enables marketers to cater to a larger audience, effortlessly.
Custom content blocks (dynamic content) in your email template that dynamically fetch updated information at the time of email open are a great way to introduce hyper-personalization in emails.
A dynamic content block needs to be included with great planning like it has been done in the Billabong email. Based on the dimension of the content to be pulled, the content block should be adjusted to avoid overlapping or excessive white space.
8. Consistent Branding
For Building Brand Identity
For your subscribers to instantly recognize your emails, it’s a good practice to maintain a consistent design across all channels - uniformity in terms of usage of brand names, logos, typefaces and other design elements.
The Branding Guidelines define your brand personality and dictate the tone your email conveys. Consistent branding is not restricted to the design but extends to your communication style as well.
9. Master Template
For Regular Emails
A master email template is an asset for email marketers who need to send promotional emails more frequently. Equipped with a common header and footer, this template can easily help to create any type of email from a single skeleton. Also, it is the best way to address any last moment email campaign demands or for sending email newsletters.
10. One-off Template
For Occasional Emails
One-off templates are the best bet when you are looking for a break from the monotony of similar looking emails. They might demand more time at the production stage, but the efforts are repaid when you delight your subscribers.
11. Email Automation
For Minimizing Workload
One of the most effective email marketing strategies, email automation is all about sending a relevant email to your customer on completing a specific task. Even though the actual email is sent by a program, it gives the email marketer the flexibility to customize the message for different subscribers currently in the same stage of your sales funnel, without sounding robotic.
From the design point of view, there won’t be a whirlwind of changes in automated emails except for the fact that welcome emails and cart abandonment emails will become more aesthetic while maintaining the practicality.
2018 for email automation means integrating more precise algorithms wherein the email marketer can set up emails to address the customer journey in a finer manner.