Email Newsletter Design Tips

To learn more about best practices to help improve your email newsletter, click here. (Link ID 3.1)

As with other forms of communications, the look of your email newsletter plays a big part in its success. When including HTML, remember that a lot of hard-and-fast “rules” were promulgated based on best practices for Web sites and didn’t take into account the unique features of email newsletters, such as the size of preview windows in clients like Outlook and the width restriction and clutter imposed by Web mail clients like Hotmail and Yahoo!

As email newsletters have evolved to become a part of many people’s busy days, a small set of general rules has emerged that takes into account the least common denominator of the major email clients. For example:

• Placements above the fold (the portion visible without scrolling vertically) generally get better response rates. Include content in the top 400 pixels that will make recipients want to open your email and click on items.
• Ensure you use consistent branding elements in the “hot zone” – the upper-left corner of your template. This technique also helps entice recipients who first glimpse your email in the preview pane to open the document.
• Consider the likelihood that recipients will print your email newsletter, and design with that in mind.

To get the clearest picture of how the layout elements of your newsletter are impacting your results, regularly overlay click-through results onto a copy of the creative. Note the above average, below average and best click-through elements and plan future issues accordingly.