10 Tips for eMail Marketing Designers

Just a few things I’ve learned and haven’t seen in e-marketing companies’ “Best Practices” guides.

1. KISS Your Design (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
You are not designing an award-winning layout or interface; you are targeting a mass audience with a short attention span. With that in mind, just keep it simple. We’re talking two or three column layout, nothing more. The more complicated you make it, the less direct the message and the easier the layout breaks in the inbox.

2. What the Font?!
Replace those font tags with inline CSS. Inline CSS will allow you to control more of the layout, such as margins, padding, and line height. You’ll also use less HTML, which is better for your SPAM score.

3. Don’t work hard. Rely on your inheritance.
Your style inheritance, that is. Place your styles in the table tag and each cell will inherit the properties. This is terribly useful for font properties that you can always override locally in your td or with a span tag. For example, define font-size, font-family, and color in the table style, but when you get to the cell featuring your headline, redefine the font-size property to override the inheritance. You also won’t have to add paragraph tags to your copy, reducing the HTML and there’s no risk that extra margin space will be applied to your copy.

4. Tell them what to do.
Special offers, events, product features, and alerts should be kept relatively short with a call to action above the fold for people who are immediately interested and at the end of the content for people who committed to reading that far, so they don’t have to scroll back to the top.

Newsletters should have a call to action at the end of each article and key words in your copy should be hyperlinked to relevant content. My preferred newsletter layout is a feature article followed by summaries of other articles (past articles, relative articles, other news) that each redirect the subscriber to your website for more.

5. He’ll never buy the cow if he gets the milk for free.
Don’t give away the content of your email in the subject line, hint to it enough to generate interest so your subscribers click and open your email to learn more. If you don’t get the open, you don’t get the click, and you don’t get the conversion.

6. Inboxes use protection. Prepare yourself.
The best part of your email is probably in a gif or jpg format, but most inboxes protect the user by prompting them to accept the images before they are displayed. This is bad for you because the subscriber essentially has to quasi-opt-in to see your email each time. Prepare for this with alt tags that reflect the content of the images and generate interest. Your alt copy will display when the images don’t and encourage the subscriber to click “display images.”

7. Don’t be a car salesmen.
The reason Carmax has been so successful is because consumers are saturated with over the top gimmicks and shady deals. The success of an email marketing campaign is in quality, relevant content with direct messaging. A cheesy headline might be a successful lead in for your grandma watching the six o’clock news, but your grandma probably isn’t included in the demographic receiving your email. Don’t try to sell your product or event; stick to the basics and let imagery, testimonials, and informational content sell it for you.

8. Subscriber = Customer
If you have a jeans boutique and your customer tried on a pair of jeans but he/she returned them to the rack, would you proceed to have them try on the same pair of jeans again, and again, and again? No. So why would you hit your subscriber list with the same email over and over and over?

9. Get to the point!
You’ve done well if you get that open, but you only have a second to capture attention and maybe a few more to get your message across, so loose the CLUTTER! Less is always more. Delete those superfluous words your marketing director thought were clever or useful.

10. Bottom Line
Know your CAN SPAM Laws, follow them, and don’t send any marketing emails if you don’t.

5 DO’s For Design & Fine Art Freelancers

Just some rules I’ve learned to follow after several years of the alternative.

1. ALWAYS get a signed contract that defines scope and fees for scope-creep BEFORE starting work.


2. Write a schedule of deadlines for yourself and your client to keep you both on schedule and accountable. Include it in the contract and even incorporate fees/discounts for lateness/timeliness. Have it signed (or included in the contract) and constantly send reminders (“Don’t forget…”) followed by warnings (“..will hold up the project and cost an extra…”).


3. Have an up-font fee for proposals or reviews of projects that will take more than an hour of your time. I generally skip this step for referrals from wonderful clients.


4. Trust your gut. If a potential client goes on tangents, changes his/her mind, or calls at inappropriate times of the day, and you don’t even have a contract yet… you will lose money or not get paid at all. Run. Don’t learn this the hard way. Run. Run! Run!!


5. Bill for meetings and phone calls. They take up your time too and the time adds up fast. It also prevents clients from wasting your time. Lawyers do it and so should you.