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While social media platforms have seen increased usage over time, email remains a critical connector for business, providing a direct line to your potential customers where you can promote your latest offerings in a targeted, timed, and essentially freeway. Basically, if you’re looking to maximize your marketing efforts, email needs to play a part.
So how can you improve your Email Marketing process?
According to statistics, 306.4 billion emails were sent and received each day in 2020. In 2024, the figure is expected to shoot to 361.6 billion. But this also poses a burning problem for email marketers – the problem of plenty.
With so many emails flowing into the subscriber’s inbox every day, subscribers are not reading but scanning them. In fact, the average time spent by a subscriber on an email has decreased by 12% from 2018.
- In 2018, the average time spent reading email is 13.4 seconds
- In 2020, the average time spent reading email is 11.82 seconds
A Good email design hand-holds a reader. Guides their reading flow, keeping them engaged. Feeds them the crux of your email campaign.
When your subscribers check their email inbox, there are three things they see:
- From Name
- Subject Line
- Preheader Text
These three aspects determine whether your email is opened or ignored.
1. Identifiable From Name
Keep your brand name as your From Name for instant recognition.
2. Captivating Subject Line
Craft a crisp, Personalized, intriguing subject line. However, make sure it conveys the purpose of your email and is NOT misleading.
You can always experiment with emojis to bring life to the inbox.
The sweet spot for the length of your subject line? 65 Characters.
3. Informative Preheader
- An extension of your subject line and a prelude to your email content, the preheader, again, must be crisp, further introducing the reader to the purpose of your email.
- Considering the space available on mobile devices for this text, 30-55 characters work well.
- Do check your subject line and preheader in all email clients before hitting send to ensure the text does not get too long.
- Add a ‘View Online‘ link in the preview text.
The Responsive Design Best practices
39% email consumption happened on mobile devices in 2020. While there has been a dip in mobile opens from 42% in 2019, this is still a huge number. Your emails, thus, have to be responsive.
- Stick to a single-column layout.
- Keep the title font-size 22px or more. The copy line width should be up to 6 words of 12-14px font size; the size is ideal for both desktop and mobile. Keep line spacing around 1.5 times the font size.
- Apple recommends a minimum of 44*44 pixels for your CTA button. As far as the font size of your CTA Button is concerned, a good rule of thumb is to use 16px or more.
Making Emails Accessible
2.2 billion people worldwide have some form of vision impairment. It is thus crucial to follow email accessibility best practices to make your emails inclusive for one and all.
- Give a logical reading order to your email by assembling the content from left to right and from top to bottom.
- Use Headers to help your subscribers using screen readers to clearly understand the hierarchy.
- Use ALT Text for images as those screen readers will listen to your ALT Text.
- Avoid center-aligned copy as people with dyslexia may find it difficult to read.
- As mentioned earlier, your CTA button size should be 44*44 px and the size of the text should be 16 px or more.
- 5% of the world population is color blind. So, mindful use of colors and contrast is essential. Make sure to include a contrast between text color and the email background color.
Follow these Email design best practices and we bet your email templates will not only pleasantly surprise your subscribers but also yield the ROI you are looking at.
