Email Creative for Know-it-alls [like me]

I feel [very occasional] guilt from time to time that this blog is all about rants and opinion and not enough about what we do as a business.  So, here is a post that dispels said myth.

As I was clearing out my ridiculous inbox I came across a few bullets in a note from Responsys that I thought would be great to pass along to our email marketing clients, and now here as well.  The article discussed some of the most valuable things to think about when crafting messages.  Often conversations focus on how an email will look best if designed this way versus that way. The biggest lesson we as professionals need to embrace is that with email we 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. I have boiled down a few bullets from the article and added my own input below for consideration.

Several critical points your creative team must keep in mind when designing E-Mails:

• 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. 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.
• All email messages should have a relevant web landing page.  You cant say everything in the body of an email - and your home page is not a "landing page".  Landing someone on your home page after they agree to take the click action in an email is purposely putting a seek-and-find mission in front of them.  Now they have to remember how they got there, and what they were responding to.  Landing page creative should be an extension of the email campaign - but different than a traditional web page on your site.  In all cases, the goal is: get to the point, present the offer, tell me take it or leave it, dons.  Don't waste anyone's time.  Readers all appreciate that (watch for more articles on landing pages to come).

It is easy for us all to forget these simple steps when we craft and push our messages so hopefully these tips help you in your strategy and delivery.  Remember, if your messages have no point, or the recipient cannot read your email, whether because the primary content is hidden below the fold or because it is coded in a way that will not render correctly, they are not likely to take an action now, and are even less likely the next time around.

Hope you found this helpful.  I will try to post these sort of things more often.

WBV