It’s a sad fact that the vast majority of marketing emails are deleted unread. Mailchimp’s marketing benchmarks tell us that the average open rate is just 20.81 per cent. If people aren’t reading your crafted emails, they are not going to respond to your calls to action. So maximising your open rate is crucial.
Did you know that if your email is not optimised for mobile, it is much more likely to be deleted? With more and more people reading emails on a mobile device, attention to this detail can improve your open rate significantly.
But how do you optimise your mailings for smaller screens? The key phrase here is ‘responsive design’. And it’s something we’re a bit passionate about at Eonic. Responsive content… er, responds… to different devices by presenting itself in a way that is easy to read and good to look at no matter what the size of screen.
Eonic’s clever mailing software will ensure your newsletter looks good whatever device it ends up on. But to be really ahead of the game, there are a few pointers to take into account when designing and writing your newsletter.
Short subject line
The best subject line is twenty-one to thirty characters. It’s not much, not even enough to get the quick brown fox over the lazy dog. But it’s enough to let your clients know they should ‘Book now: limited spaces’ or that there’s a ‘50% discount today’ or that they should ‘Renew now or miss out’.
Go narrow or go home
A single column design is best for a newsletter, with a 600px maximum width. Our newsletter templates will automatically organise your content into columns.
Hero image above the fold
Put the what above the where now? Your hero image is the large web banner image. It should be the first thing your reader sees, which is why you want to put it above the fold. The fold is the part of the page that is visible without scrolling. As you can imagine, the fold falls in different places, depending on the reader’s screen size.
Alt-text, yes please
Alt-text is a sentence describing the picture. It has an accessibility application in that it supports people with impaired vision as they navigate the internet using assistive technology such as screen readers. But also, many mail clients block images, so that alt-text will tell your readers what’s in your email even if they can’t immediately see the images.
Are your buttons big enough?
Don’t irritate clients by asking them to dab ineffectually at a tiny button. A mobile-friendly minimum for call-to-action buttons is 44 by 44px.
Use the footer
Get a footer template with links to all the different parts of your website. And speaking of links, where are the links in your newsletter going? If the answer is ‘to a non-responsive web page designed for desktop screens’, go to the bottom of the class. Landing pages need to be responsive too, so that having caught your reader’s attention, you get them to follow through on your call-to-action.
Finally…
Before you hit send, do a test mailing. Make sure you test it on all sorts of different screens and platforms. You can send it to yourself and your colleagues and then view it on a variety of different devices. Or there are various emulators on the market.
Can Eonic help you with your email marketing?
Eonic offers support for email marketing so if writing and designing newsletters is giving you a headache, we’ve got people who can take the job off your hands. Our Kent-based newsletter experts work with our bespoke MailManager system that automatically optimises your mailer for mobile screens. We can quickly test on all sorts of different formats too. And because of the way we provide our service we can offer email newsletter support that is tailored to your needs. Get in touch and tell us what you want to do.