Guest post by Berta Melder
Email marketing is not going anywhere, in fact, it’s more popular than ever. According to statistics, businesses and consumers send and receive more than 293.6 billion emails every day, and this number is expected to grow up to 333.2 billion by 2022. The popularity of emails also means that marketers and vendors have to look for new approaches that will allow them to stand out.
If you want your email campaign to be effective, the first thing you should do is analyze your target audience. You should understand your audience to communicate with it in a meaningful way. Therefore, you should embrace analytics. You can easily identify the strengths and weaknesses of your campaign if you know how many people open your emails, what they click on, and what devices they use.
The use of analytics is one of the main email trends in 2019, however, it’s not the only trend that will help you make your emails outstanding. Another crucial thing is choosing the right design approach, and the latest trends in email design are worth considering them in more detail.
Email Design Trends in 2019
- Interactivity
Links and sidebars are the most basic elements that make your emails interactive. The latest trends in email design introduce numerous additional menus, search features, galleries, and other options that turn an email into a microsite. Emails should be engaging and highly functional. - Minimalism and simplicity
Smartphones and tablets are used to access emails most often. As our attention span becomes shorter and designers have less space to work with, simplicity becomes not just a visual solution but an opportunity to make your emails more attractive for recipients and easier to use. We recommend that you make mobile optimization your main priority when designing your emails. Minimalistic emails are easy to consume and so ensure a better response to calls to action. - Segmentation and personalization
The use of various sources of information and dynamic content makes it easier to connect with individuals from your audience. Such technologies as big data and various automation solutions allow you to analyze a lot of information about your recipients, trying innovative approaches to design. Personalized emails demonstrate 26% higher open rates. People receive dozens of generic promotional emails every day, so if you want them to open your messages, you should get closer to your audience, making your emails more personal.
The Best Design Techniques to Increase Conversions
- Choose previews and subjects carefully
The main things that you should customize are the preview and subject lines. For example, if the subject of your emails is just the name of your website, it won’t provide the recipients with any valuable information so they won’t feel motivated to open the email. Make sure that the preview text allows your audience to understand what the email is about. In addition, we recommend that you use different preview and subject text. These two parts of your email can give a lot of insight and make your recipients interested in reading the whole thing. - Use the right colors to evoke certain emotions
You can make your emails very effective if you understand how different colors affect your recipients’ emotions. For example, black delivers a sense of luxury, while orange and yellow are associated with energy and happiness. Red immediately draws attention. It is also associated with love and passion. Blue will help you deliver a sense of stability and trust. It also creates a calming effect. - Create consistent email and website branding
Your email campaigns should naturally complement your website. Therefore, we suggest that you use the same color solutions and fonts, creating a consistent experience so that your audience can seamlessly engage with your brand through various channels. “When your emails look familiar, your subscribers are more likely to trust you. Consistency in design leads to higher click-through rates and so increases conversions,” explains Kate Kennedy, an email marketing expert at Masterra. - Break up the content
Your content should be easy to read, without distracting the audience from your calls to action or other meaningful messages. Therefore, if your emails contain different sorts of information, you should make sure to divide it effectively. Experiment with geometric shapes, create borders, and adjust layouts to break your content into digestible sections.
This approach also works great with segmentation. You can organize your information in different ways for different segments of your audience, improving the relevance of your emails. - Minimalist design to focus on what’s really important
We’ve already mentioned the importance of eliminating possible distractions. This is the main reason why minimalistic design is so popular. If you’re wondering why your subscribers don’t click on your calls to action, make sure that nothing distracts them from these elements. Your audience only sees what you want them to see. Your CTA buttons should be the central elements of design, accompanied by concise and informative self-explanatory headers. According to research, bold CTA buttons increase conversions by 28%, compared to generic textual CTA links. - Use GIFs
People love videos. Videos quickly grab attention and they are the most engaging type of content. Unfortunately, many email providers don’t support video, but you can make your emails less boring by using GIFs. They are easy to upload and take just a little more file space than JPEG photos. GIFs allow you to demonstrate products in action or to show different color variations of the same product. Last but not least, GIFs have proven to increase click-through rates by as much as 26%.
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Conclusion
The best way to increase your conversion rates is to make your emails stand out. They should grab attention and provide a personalized experience so that your recipients will want to open and read them. There are many creative approaches that will help you make your emails engaging and effective, enabling your audience to focus on your calls to action. The main thing is to know who your subscribers are and what they need your brand for. Nothing will let you evaluate the effectiveness of your email campaign better than analyzing the response from your subscribers. Thus, don’t be afraid to experiment with design, making your emails more engaging and easier to read.
About the Author: Berta Melder is an experienced brand manager, currently associated with Masterra as a content marketing strategist, but thinking about additional career development opportunities as a data visualisation specialist. Also, Berta is a regular contributor to publications on a broad range of digital topics. Follow her on Twitter.
