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When I was twelve, I remember going overboard in jazzing up the emails I would send to my friends. I would place an image in the background to give it a stationery-like feel, add a plethora of animated icons and my font was always something fancy and colorful. The days of my over-the-top emails are gone, thankfully, but looking back on this has made me wonder how we can bring back the creativeness of emails in a tasteful but eye-catching way.
Putting together a creative email doesn’t require as much work as one may think. The trick to a great marketing email, actually, is focusing on a mix of simplicity, strategically placed text and eye-catching visuals. Here are four tips to keep in mind as you plan out your email marketing campaigns for 2013:
– Use current trends geared toward visual appeal. If you’ve ever seen an Apple commercial or a whiteboard commercial from UPS, you’ll agree that sometimes the most simplistic visuals are the most effective. Use this to your advantage in emails by incorporating sketches, a handwritten font for headers or even comic book-looking images to draw attention to trends that most are attracted and used to (sometimes at more of a subconscious level). This message that I recently received from clothing store Anthroplogie is a great example of a clean, colorful and effective email.
– Give depth to text. Use arrows to guide readers, quotes and clean fonts to help you make sure that the most important parts of your email are noticed first. These emails from Brain Pickings and ModCloth are great examples.
– Headers can pack a powerful punch. A text header, when paired with a bold font, can be the deciding factor for how long email recipients stay on your message. Use it against a product image for an email that is simple and attention-grabbing. This can even be used as a welcome message for eNewsletters!
– Remove distractions. Sometimes, sending an email with only a small amount of text isn’t enough to get a message across. When this happens, removing distractions is key. Choose a clean font face and color, make your hyperlinks more eye-catching by changing the link color and consider using visuals to break up what would normally be a long email. Be sure to choose a background color that helps your text to be easily readable – sometimes, a white background is your best bet. Check out this ShelterCare email for inspiration.
Be sure to check out this article from HubSpot that provides some wonderful examples of the tips mentioned in this article!