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Creative Best Practices


J Scott

Email Design Gone Bad: What to do when the biggest challenge facing your email marketing program is your own creative team

By Julian S. Scott, Responsys Creative Director
June 2007
 

Time and time again I discover that one of the main obstacles to creating effective, visually engaging, brand propelling, and, most importantly, results-driven emails is often the very creative team creating them.

Whether internal or outsourced, creative teams often forget that they are paid to design something in order to communicate a specific message and generate a specific result... not just to look visually interesting. In order to do so, we all must recognize that different design mediums have different rules and requirements, whether it be print or web.

Unfortunately, many creative professionals treat email design as a hybrid between print and web, which results in the worst combination possible for effective email marketing.

Without a doubt, designing for email is one of the most difficult challenges facing interactive creative professionals today — a challenge often exacerbated by the misguided attitude that personal design preferences can override basic email best practices.

There are many factors that need to be taken into consideration when designing an email — from how much content there will be, whether there will be dynamic content, how the design will organize the content, what calls-to-action to use, and finally, how it will be coded. Everything needs to come together precisely in unison to deliver the optimal email marketing message that delivers the optimal results.

Often my conversations focus on how an email will look best if designed this way versus that way. The biggest lesson email creative professionals need to embrace is that they must learn to design for the worst case, not the best case. Otherwise, it is a simple case of resistance to the facts — facts that have been validated time and time again through comprehensive testing across the industry.

Several critical points your creative team must keep in mind:

  • Best practices are best practices for a reason. If Outlook 2007 does not render background images, then why risk the integrity of the design and message by including them just because one email client will? Unless it will work in 99.9% of environments, it is not a best practice and should generally be avoided.
  • Print is not the same as email. How the recipient will interact with it and read it will be very different. Emails are rarely viewed in their entirety. You have to be able to tell your story within consolidated chunks that are clear, easily scanned, and actionable. Emails are read top to bottom and left to right. Placing the headline at the bottom of the email is not going to work as the email recipient is not likely to be motivated to scroll down. You have only a few seconds to grab their attention — don't waste it making them search for the primary points and call to action.
  • The way you would code a web page is not the same way you code an email, and you must adjust your design to accommodate: no background images, no Flash, no forms, no Java script, no CSS, no image maps... the list goes on and on. The technology for a web page may be 2007, but the email has to be 1997.
  • An email is never the destination. It serves as a stepping stone to motivate email recipients to take an action to a web page. If the email is not designed with this in mind, then the point of sending an email is being missed (and money is being wasted). Who cares what the open rates and click-through rates are if they are not converting! Clicks don't pay salaries.
Remember, if the recipient cannot read your email, whether because the primary content is hidden below the fold or it is coded in a way that will not render correctly, he or she is not likely to take an action now and is even less likely the next time around.

Some simple things you can do to help keep your creative team on track is to make sure everyone attends industry events regularly and stays on top of industry trends and news. Also, try to include them as part of your marketing planning process. Often, just understanding "why" is critical to effective implementation. Always be sure to share results and encourage creative thinking that can be validated through testing. And finally, when all else fails, consider outsourcing to an organization that does "get it."


Responsys Professional Services Organization offers a wide range of creative services. To learn more, contact your Responsys representative today.