Really, what is a good content?

What is a good email? One of our most frequently asked questions is if there is ONE email design that’s better than others. The answer often depend on what we mean with better. Is your goal to get higher click through rate? Higher open rate? Is your goal to establish a relation with your customers? Or is to improve awareness of your brand?

We ♥️  email! And we ♥️  talking about it, so if you want to improve your email content, contact us! There are however some golden rules we want to share.

1. Mobile first

Nowadays you can count on that over 60% of your recipents opens your email in the mobile first. Have that in mind when you’re designing your email.
If you’re not that comfortable in mobile friendly design, contact us and we’ll help you out!

2. Be consistant using your graphic profile

Let the recipient recognize you and use the same graphic profile through your different platforms.

3. Use a distinct and effectful CTA

Place your most important CTA (call to action) in the top of your email content and let it be visible in both color and size. Be clear about where the recipient will end up but don’t write an essay in it. And triple check so that by clicking the button the recipient will end up on the correct page, e.g. if you’re linking to “My pages” the URL should be directly to the login page and not the start page.

And no, there are no colors better than others. Just make them visible.

4. Use images

Include big and beautiful images that renders nicely in on retina screens (e.g. high resolution images).
Images with people, and more specific people smiling, intends to make us want to stay in the email. Although, people intend to follow other peoples eyes, so if you want to get your recipents to pay attention to something specific in your email, use an image with people looking at it.
Traditionally the recommendations has been to place images on the left content side but now, with mobile clients, this is fading out.

5. Editable text and Web Safe Fonts

Yes, Baron or Moderne Sans looks great! But, most of your recipients won’t see them (unless they already installed the font on their device), instead you’ll end up with line and letter spacing that are not fitted to the fall back font (i.e. Arial). And then your email don’t look that awesome anymore. Have a look at W3Shools to learn which fonts are web safe.

When using editable text instead of images it helps you to keep a good image/text/link ratio which reduces the risk to get stuck in spam filters.
It also helps you deliver your message even if images may not have been showned for some reason.

6. Accessibility

All of us don’t have the same conditions to read an email. Be fair and awesome by including accessibility when you design your email. Email clients has become better to support this but you can still contribute:

• be clear with your subject, preheader and headings
• try to keep your text content short
• make sure your font color is contrasting your background color
• include alternativ text to your images
• have a logical structure of your content
• use distinct links and CTA:s

7. Tell a story

Nothing is as effective as engaging content – incorporate that in your email. For example, tell about changes by showing them; before and after, or autumn leaves around your logo. Dare to refuse static!

8. Test!

Last, but definitely not least: test, test and test! It’s the most important thing of all, test your emails! By getting an overview on how your email renderes in different clients you can get ideas for your design. Or use Carma’s A/B testing to improve subjects and content. What seemed like a good idea in the start may not fit your email communication. There’s only one way to find out. And don’t forget to have fun along the way – it shows!