Many businesses are using email newsletters as a marketing and communication tool. This is because by using newsletters you keep record of past customers while at the same time market your products to potential consumers who have shown interest and, most importantly, the business gets full exposure to your target.
It is well known that email is not only cost effective as compared to other advertising or marketing methods but it has also a high return on investment.
But let’s look at it from a subscriber’s perspective. As a subscriber, you will notice that your inbox will constantly receive emails. It behaves more like an endless pit sometimes because almost all newsletters look the same and the newsletter owners are not to blame that much.
As much as it seems easy to create and send out newsletters, it becomes a little tricky when it comes to designing a custom template and building your own code.
It is important that you design your newsletter well as it creates an interest for users in your product and/or services and it also earns their trust. Below are guidelines for designing and distributing email newsletters.
The purpose of your newsletter
You must identify your purpose for building a newsletter before you get into designing it. Information included in newsletters varies depending on the type of website you run. Despite the difference, keep in mind that the main reason for a newsletter is to deliver convenient updates straight to your readers’ email inbox.
Internet users, even those that are extremely busy, will always make time to go through their mail at least once in a day. This becomes the greatest opportunity to reach out to people and actually deliver the intended message.
At this point you can start designing, after you’ve analyzed your target audience and the decided the clear objective of the newsletter. You will need to come up with a layout that will guide your readers to the call to action button that makes them buy a product or try a service.
The design
Once you have defined your purpose, you can design your newsletter to suit this purpose. If your purpose is announcing a new product or promoting your services, then it is important that your newsletter focuses on the given product or service.
Rather than filling your newsletter with unending information, make it short and straight to the point. This is because people scan to find what they think is important and they will not read every bit, word for word. It is advisable that you include short paragraphs and bullet points case this will help readers retrieve the information they really need.
The newsletter design can be one-column or multi-column. While you can choose one to work with, you can also combine these designs. As much as a one-column grid is easier to skim, it requires a lot of space and will in turn make the newsletter lengthy which is not advisable for certain target audiences.
Header
The header helps push the brand’s value and in turn draws the subscriber to a positive response where they feel the urge to want to receive more. The header must appear on all your newsletters as it helps capture the readers’ attention.
The content
The header has attracted the reader and it is now time to move to the next step. It is up to you to deliver in detail what your interesting headings or subtitles are conveying. They have to go hand in hand and it is therefore very important that you go straight to the point rather than make the reader fish out for the relevant information.
The footer
This is the section that concludes the entire newsletter. It will also include the contact details that the reader will use for feedback.
Also, readers will be able to share the information to others if there are social media links in the footer. In the event that readers do not find it relevant, they have to find the link to unsubscribe at the footer which is a must in a newsletter.
Using images in the newsletter design
Images should not be a necessity in your e-mails. Not every client will be able to view them unless their addresses is added to a safe list. Images should not be mandatory but rather a topping for page aesthetics.
However, you can also build images specifically for e-mail. In this case, setting img tags for width and height attributes is important. If these are not in order, subscribers’ email clients may distort the images. You can also let people identify what the image contains even before it loaded by using an alt tag.
It is quite tricky when positioning images. One tip is that you do not use floats. Instead use: image align=”left” as it provides better results. You could also map out exact table cells so that they fit your image along the top and sides of the newsletter. Keep in mind that smaller sized images provide best results as they can be viewed by the majority.
Keep images in your own web server for storage purposes. Avoid storage through image hosts.
Test before delivering it
Testing must be done so as to identify any errors before it can go out to your subscribers. An easy testing method is by sending the newsletter to yourself then viewing it from different online devices. This ensures that your subscribers receive readable content that is easy to comprehend and free of errors.
Showcase
You can view some newsletter designs in this article’s showcase, courtesy of reallygoodemails.com. These are designs from websites that have out of the world layouts for their newsletter content. These can be taken as examples for your future newsletter designs.
Assembly
Big Cartel
Campaign Monitor
Ledbury
Litmus
Squarespace
The Tech Block
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