The Ineffective Email

The slow decline of print advertising has been accompanied by the growth of digital marketing.

Print advertising includes newspapers, magazines, phone books and junk mail.

I have seen some of my friends in the print business evolve into the digital world, but there are a few tips and "tricks" to keep in mind as outlines by MarketingProfs.com:

Five Email Design Must-Haves

The average email subscriber faces an inbox filled with clutter. Once she sorts through a variety of personal, professional and marketing messages, she won't look kindly on messy or incoherent email offers. "Without a well-crafted, clear and consistent design for your brand, your email is going nowhere in a hurry," says John Murphy in an article at MarketingProfs.

Here's how to avoid such a pitfall:

Use a good balance of text and images. Many spam filters consider an email's text-to-image ratio when deciding if it will reach a recipient's inbox. If there's too much text or too many images, it risks banishment to the spam folder.

Assume that images will be blocked. There's a good chance your subscribers will only see embedded images if they actively click on a link to display them. Because of this, the text in your message has to make sense even if its images don't show up.

Provide a back-up option for image-rich backgrounds. A number of clients—Gmail and Microsoft Outlook, for example—don't support background images. But Murphy says there's a workaround. "HTML allows both an image and a color to be coded in the same tag," he writes, "which means that if a mail client supports background images, the images will be displayed; if it doesn't, then the chosen color will appear as the email background instead."

Include a table of contents for lengthier messages. When an email has several sections, ease its navigation with a simple table of contents that links within the message to the topics a subscriber wants to read.

Remember a call to action. You've sent the message because you want your recipient to do something—so make sure he can.

The Po!nt: How it works matters as much as how it reads. Don't sabotage your strong content with weak email design.

Source: MarketingProfs.

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