Email design is a critical element of every campaign. It’s not just the visual representation of your brand and message, it’s about understanding the wants and needs of your subscribers and giving them a consistent, easy experience while also pushing the creative envelope.
A recent Litmus report breaks down the practices of more than 3,000 professional marketers, who shared their insights and best practices that they apply to their own campaigns. Some of the statistics include:
- 66% of respondents said their company has brand or design guidelines, while 34% do not.
- Most email marketers use a responsive approach to email design for differing types of emails. 68% used a responsive approach for broadcast and segmented emails; 66% for automated and triggered emails; and 60% for transactional emails.
- Email marketers are least likely to adapt a desktop-centric design.
- 40% of marketers undergo a major redesign of their email template at least every year; 42% redesign templates at least every two years; 12% at least every three years, and 6% at least every four years.
- 17% of marketers review automated emails every three months; 22% review them every 6 months; 37% once a year; 14% every two years; and 10% every three years.
What are the major takeaways from this report? The first is the value of creating brand and design guidelines for your emails to ensure consistent branding and experiences across campaigns, and in many cases, other brand platforms including social media and landing pages. Having these guidelines in place also improves your efficiency during the creation process because it provides a blueprint from which to work.
Secondly, it’s somewhat surprising how infrequently email marketers review automated emails. It’s important for you to routinely check-up and test automated emails at least every three months, while emails that drive high return rates, such as cart abandonment emails, should be checked even more frequently.
Looking ahead, some predictions and on-going email design trends include:
- User-generated content – such as greater allowance for subscriber feedback
- Interactivity – including rollover effects and product carousels
- Accessibility – limiting technical or industry-specific jargon, difficult words, and long sentences
- Automation – certainly a tactic already trending and not going anywhere soon.
Regardless of what exciting and fresh new elements and designs you incorporate into your future campaigns, utilize this report and workflow systems to see how it stacks up against what your competitors are doing. Let ResponseGenius help take your email marketing to the next level – hello@responsegenius.com
