Blog, Email design

The 7 golden rules for effective emailing

11 October 2012 Comments Off on Las 7 reglas de oro para lograr un emailing efectivo

When designing an emailing campaign, we must first of all take into account the context in which the user's experience with the email will take place.
The saturation of emails we receive means that the little time we spend reading them is very selective. Usability analyses indicate that a user spends 3 to 4 seconds deciding whether to read an email.

Here are 7 golden rules for effective emailing.
1. The sender: create a recognisable sender, both in the From Name and the From Email. This avoids the use of "no-reply" or other unfriendly formulas. Some studies indicate that 73% of users classify emails as spam based on this field.
 
2. The issue: The optimum length for a subject is between 3 and 7 words (no more than 50 characters). Longer subjects are hidden in most mail servers and the user does not pay attention to them. Avoid as much as possible words that could be called "commercially aggressive", such as offer, free, discount, etc. They can affect the level of deliverability. Finally, it is essential to test different issues. Keep in mind that the subject line, together with the from, are the elements that the user will value before deciding whether or not to open the email.
3. Fragment of text: Some email programs such as Gmail or Outlook show, next to the subject line, a snippet of text including the first few lines of the email body text. With this in mind, think about what message you want to put or avoid at the beginning of the email, it will help you to improve open rates.
4. Blocking of images: the best way to overcome the limitations of automatic image blocking is to combine text with images and include descriptive alt tags for the image.

  • The 67% desktop email services block images by default.
  • 100% webmails block images by default
  • The 80% of mobile operating systems block images by default.

Source: Litmus
5. The preview: Many users have their email provider's preview enabled. This is something we should take into account and think about offering the user's eyes "engaging" content in the upper third of the email body (a space of 300px by 400px). Otherwise, the user will pass over the content without noticing anything that catches their attention and we will lose the opportunity to show them the rest of the body of the message.
 
6. The body of the message and calls to actionKeep in mind that once the email is opened, you have very few seconds to capture the user's attention, arouse their interest in the content and motivate them to interact with the calls to action. Therefore, we recommend including at least one call to action in the header, placing the main message in the first third of the email (50% users do not scroll) and distributing clickable links throughout the body of the message.
7. The landing page: With the user's interaction with the email, the work does not end... you have to carry out a proper design of the landing page. It is essential that the content of the landing page is consistent with the promise of the email, otherwise, the only thing you will generate is frustration and a bad experience.