designing for your subscribers - tips and tricks to increase email marketing roi

DESIGNING FOR YOUR SUBSCRIBERSTips and Tricks to Increase Email Marketing ROI

PERFORMANCE-DRIVEN DESIGN

• Design is the visualization of a business plan. More than a pretty picture, great design requires an actionable plan and measureable goals.

• Design should acknowledge the subscriber experience.Put yourself in your subscriber’s shoes and understand how they will interact with your communications.

• Design and technology are seamlessly integrated.Emails should be designed and coded to display properly in the various ways a subscriber will view it. A comprehensive testing strategy is essential to ensure success.

AGENDA

• Business Planning Checklist• Subscriber Experience• Performance Driven Design• Design Considerations• The Mobile Inbox• General Coding Considerations• What elements are supported in email?• Tools for creating HTML• Email client-specific recommendations

BUSINESS PLANNING CHECKLIST

• Why are you sending this email? Drive leads Increase brand awareness

• Who are you sending to, and what do you know about them? Internal audience: sales reps and C-suite executives External audience: subscriber behavior by segment

• What do you want subscribers to do once they receive your email? Register for a webinar Read an article

• How are you going to measure success? Open/click data Number of leads generated

SUBSCRIBER EXPERIENCE

Consider the entire subscriber experience – from first impression to final click.

Each individual phase influences the decision to open and engage with your email.

Your email design is experienced in stages – not as a static page.

FROM NAME

SUBJECT LINE

PREVIEW PANE

ABOVE THE FOLD

COMPLETE EMAIL

CLICK THROUGH

*Email Sender and Provider Coalition

It all begins with the From Name – 73% of subscribers click “Report Spam” or “Report Junk” based on this field.

FROM NAME

IS YOUR FROM NAME EASILY

RECOGNIZABLE?

SUBJECT LINE

*Email Sender and Provider Coalition

69% of subscribers click “Report Spam” or “Report Junk” based on this line.*

IS YOUR SUBJECT LINE RELEVANT

AND INTERESTING?

IS YOUR SUBJECT LINE RELEVANT

AND INTERESTING?

SUBJECT LINE

69% of subscribers click “Report Spam” or “Report Junk” based on this line.*

Images are disabled by default more than 50% of the time. Is your key message visible, relevant and enticing in this space?

PREVIEW PANE: IMAGES OFF

WHAT IS YOUR EMAIL SAYING

WITH IMAGES OFF?

PREVIEW PANE: IMAGES ON

What’s your open rate? Only subscribers that turn images on trigger an open.Are you giving them a reason to keep reading?

AVERAGE PREVIEWPANE DIMENSIONS:

300px by 300px

CONSIDER THE SUBSCRIBER EXPERIENCE

Is this the message you want to convey?

ABOVE THE FOLD

Does your content above the fold provide motivation to respond? Are you persuading subscribers to scroll?

DON’T CRAMEVERYTHING

ABOVE THE FOLD…INTRODUCE CONTENT

ABOVE THE FOLD

*The Nielsen Norman Group

COMPLETE EMAIL

• Seconds – not minutes – to view an entire email• Only 11%* of those who open

will scroll below the fold!

EVEN IN THIS VIEWTHE ENTIRE EMAIL IS NOT

ONSCREEN AT ONCE

Subscriber experience doesn’t end with the inbox

CLICK THROUGH

• Don’t ignore the transition to your website, landing page, or other marketing collateral.

• Ensure the products in your email are available on your site - better yet, map the individual products from the email to a product page.

Brand Synergy • Content Hierarchy • Visual Hierarchy

Engagement Techniques • Rendering Results • Tested Quality

PERFORMANCE DRIVEN DESIGN

Visual recognition of the brand across all media channels creates a seamless brand experience, creating trust to engage and transact.

Email

Website

BRAND SYNERGY

Create a content hierarchy, arranging each content element (text and/or image) and associated call to action with appropriate weight.

Wireframe Preview Pane

Above the Fold

CONTENT HIERARCHY

Maximize response by creating a visual hierarchy, using design techniques to guide the subscriber's eye through your email based on the content hierarchy.

Primary call-to-action

Secondary calls-to-action

VISUAL HIERARCHY

Headlines utilizing size and color hierarchy

“Quick Bites” or summaries

Use design techniques to engage the subscriber through a mix of emotive and rational imagery and content. Smart use of images, borders, buttons, links, charts, colored

backgrounds, etc. should be applied and tested.

Preheader Teaser Text

In This Issue

Lifestyle Imagery

Link to External Video

Forward to a Colleague

Subscriber Q&A

Recovery Module

Read More Link

Use of Background Color

ENGAGEMENT TECHNIQUES

Optimized Design Non-optimized Design

If an email is created primarily with images,it will not display effectively when images are blocked.

HTML text in web safe fonts

Main call-to-action in prime placement

Designed with image-blocking and

preview pane viewing in mind.

Ensure your design efforts are viewed as intended once they hit the inbox. Emails that are created with the subscriber experience in mind will have a

greater chance of success.

RENDERING RESULTS

Top 10 email clients:General (B2B & B2C combined)Outlook 43%

Hotmail 17%

Yahoo! Mail 13%

Gmail 5%

Apple Mail 4%

iPhone 4%

Thunderbird 2.4%

Windows Live Mail (Desktop) 2%

AOL Mail 1.2%

Lotus Notes 0.4%

Only comprehensive testing will validate successful rendering of design and ensure functional performance prior to sending to the subscriber inbox.

*Fingerprint from Litmus, February 2010

Top 10 email clients:Florida Power & Light (B2C)

Yahoo! Mail 29%

Outlook 21%

Windows Live Hotmail 14%

Apple iPhone 7%

Apple Mail 6%

AOL Mail 5%

Comcast 3%

Windows Live Mail (Desktop) 1%

Earthlink <1%

Other (<1% each) ~13%

TESTED QUALITY

*ExactTarget via Fingerprint from Litmus, Feb. 2010

NEWSLETTER DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

• Include a Table of Contents or In This Issue Section

• Include a 3-4 sentence teaser for articles with a “Read More” link instead of including the full article

• Introduce your main call-to-action within the preview pane and other important content above the fold

• Develop a visual hierarchy for headings, subheading, and body copy for easy scan-ability

• Use images selectively to eye track to engagement areas

POSTCARD DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

• Your message should have a singular focus; don’t let your postcard become a newsletter

• Make that message the Hero in your design

• Introduce your main call-to-action within the preview pane and other important content above the fold

• Consider the placement and inclusion of secondary messaging that supports your main focus

TRANSACTIONAL DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

• Position content front and center; keep it simple

• Don’t include too much cross-sell information (follow the 70/30 rule)

• Use a higher text to image ratio

• Use font colors and sizes to create a visual hierarchy

• Send a branded HTML email instead of Plain Text

THE MOBILE INBOX

• Smartphone users use mobile email primarily for triage

• There are no standards in place for displaying emails on smartphones

• Most mobile devices display a “stripped down” version of the HTML portion of an email, NOT the plain-text version

• Optimizing your emails with HTML text in web-safe fonts will benefit smartphone users as well

• Consider including a link in your email to view a mobile friendly version of your email

DESIGN RESOURCES

Design Tips for Outlook 2007

Email MarketingDesign & Rendering: The New Essentials

Email Design for Lotus Notes

CareerBuilder.comCase Study

EXACTTARGET DESIGN RESOURCES

Email Design Checklist

Visit ExactTarget.comTo Download

These Resources

Design Team BlogNew posts weekly!blog.exacttarget.com

EXACTTARGET DESIGN RESOURCES

Design Team Tweets@ETDesigntwitter.com/etdesign

MarketingExperimentsMaximize Agency ROIthrough testing

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