How to design an email: before you start

The design phase of an email or email marketing campaign has to take into account several factors. First of all, before opening Photoshop, Fireworks or whatever design tool you use, we must analyse the situation and work on a strategic approach. For this phase, we recommend that you ask yourself the following questions:
1. Who is your audience?
What profile does our user have, what is their lifestyle like? This is the basic question to address when creating an email/email campaign. If we lose sight of the user, our campaign is guaranteed to fail.
2. From which devices/email clients do they read us?
This question will help us orient the content and structure of the email to the user experience on different devices. For example, we will answer the question: "Do I need a responsive email?" Can I design with elements that do not yet have support in some email clients? (This will be possible if the majority of our audience opens the emails on compatible devices/clients).
How can I know from where the user is opening us? Some email marketing tools they provide this information, but if that is not the case there are other services that can help us. At Digital Response we have used Litmus Analytics which provides an interesting analysis of the programs used.

3. What are our goals?
It seems like an obvious question, but we often see misleading tactics and even reports based on erroneous indices. The most common one is giving too much importance to the open rate and lose sight of other more reliable indicators such as the click rate, reactivity, or conversion rate. A poor definition of goals can lead us to miss the entire strategy, so we must take care of this process.
4. What do users look for in our emails?
As important as what we want from users is what they want from us. The task is to align our goals with those of the user when opening the email to optimize the effectiveness of the campaign. Do they want quick access to a discount? Do they want to contact us in the simplest way possible? Do they want to confirm a subscription? Once we have a clear understanding of their expectations, we must make this process as easy as possible to achieve the highest conversion rate. This question will lead us to optimize the structure, content, and placement of CTAs…
Once these questions are answered, it is time to open the design program and apply what we have learned in this process. Would you add any questions to the list?